Life is full of lessons. Sometimes harder than digesting iron nails, but lessons nonetheless. One of those lessons, stop trusting God. I am not against the fundamental concept of God, however, after witnessing everything around, I believe God does exist, but only as a watcher. He has no desire to meddle in our lives and just observes us, studying us. The Creator has made His creations and now just wants to see how they unfurl over the course of time. I believed in karma. What you sow, so shall you reap. Unlike any other faith one holds, which includes blindly entrusting the power of your fate to a divine existence, sometimes it turns almost impossible to balance the equation as to what is being reaped and when did I sow it. Still, I somehow tried to forcefully make sense out of everything happening around, as the life dragged on a day to day basis survival.
However, some situations are just plain outrageous which makes you question everything.
Today when I woke up, as a daily ritual, the first thing I looked out for was my mobile phone. Unsurprisingly it was switched off, as it was not left with much juice since last night. When I plugged the charger and switched the phone on, I was amazed to see one of the rarest things my eyes ever witness – a Whatsapp message by Papa. I immediately opened the phone only to find a pretty crisp and formal sounding message, “Good Morning. Your number is not responding. Call me whenever you see this message.” I did expect his message to be of similar tone, but it still did not give any clue regarding what it could possibly be about. I mean it sounded pretty… monotonous. It was hard to figure out what could be the possible reason behind Papa trying to call me before (that was when I looked at the time) 9:30 in the morning. The message showed the timestamp of around 8:30 A.M. which meant he probably tried calling me even before that. Something was important. So I decided to call him at that time itself. Just before I was going to make the call, my phone received three SMS, regarding the calls missed during the time mobile was switched off. All were from Papa and the time they showed was… around 5:30 in the morning. Now I was sure that it was something very important, but I could still not feel a sense of urgency till then. I mean, yes I still made the call immediately, but I was mentally ready to handle whatever the situation was. Papa picked up the phone in two rings and I asked, “Papa I just saw your message.”
“You woke up?”
“Ya, just now.”
“Okay.. Listen.. our house has been broken into. There were three people. Your mother is brave. She was a bit injured by them.”
I did hear silently what followed, but my brain did not register anything. I think Papa mentioned about the cash, jewellery they took. When there was no response from me, he calmly said, “Mom is fine. Your uncle and aunt have reached there. The police investigation is in progress. So, what could have happened, has already happened. Try not to get into panic mode.” His voice was as plain as the tone of the Whatsapp message he sent. And as his son, I was very well aware regarding how calm he would actually be. He wanted me to be calm so he conveyed the entire thing as calmly as possible. Now it was my turn to respond calmly so that he could maintain his calm knowing that I was calm. He said he would be reaching home next morning and asked me to take care. The next thing I was doing, checking the first flight back home.
It takes 1.5 hours to reach home by flight and the earliest possible flight was at night. Thankfully, I got the reservation on a train scheduled to leave Delhi in the next 2 hours. And thus began the 10 hours long journey back to Maa, which led me to play every single possibility of how things could have gone wrong. How we all are scattered and we could not even be there for each other at moment’s notice when needed. How helpless I am, yet again.
When I finally reached home and saw Maa, she looked back at me in a way which made me shiver. It felt as if she did not expect that she would be able to see me again. Though she said she wasn’t afraid, she admitted that at one point of time during the incident she had made her peace with it. She told me in detail about how the events turned out. How one of the thieves carried a sickle and also threatened about having a gun. How one of them was touching her feet for forgiveness after the other hit her twice with something that made a resounding metallic ‘thud’ sound at impact. How she knew that the third blow would be her last, but thanks to God it never came. How the two blows nearly missed her left eye by a few centimetres. How she was quite calm the entire time, even at the time when she called Papa to tell him about it, which clarified how Papa was able to be calm about it.
What was the lesson in this situation? What Karma created this shitstorm? What the hell was God doing in case I am wrong about Him? If I am right about Him, He’s a sadistic piece of shit. I should thank Him that the third blow never came? How about crucifying Him for this entire situation to happen in the first place? I never had much trust in the Almighty’s way of running things down, but what in the world was Karma doing? Jerking around?
I am deeply aware that there is a positive spin to it, an optimistic takeaway. I am not interested. I am not buying this entire hidden lesson, everything happens for good bullshit, as far as my family is concerned. Some lines are not to be crossed. I think the actual lesson I take away from this incident is that I hope the guy who hit Mom avoids getting caught for his own sake. Otherwise one of the Almighty Creator’s creation would be using a thick iron rod filling in for karma, for meticulously breaking every single bone in his limbs. Then let him recuperate and heal completely, even pay for his medication. Then do it all over again and leave him on his own.
I feel myself in a very precarious position lately, with or without these obtuse lessons of life, still holding tight somehow. But something like this is not supposed to be on the cards. The family is strictly off-limits. I hope this message is clearly conveyed to the upper echelons of the department dealing with the dealings of His Holiness and the strings of Karma.
ABSINRAW 