Dear Lord,
Up there, or wherever you are, you must be in pain watching people suffer. It is not easy to witness human misery unfold in such devastating magnitude. People are dying in thousands without oxygen and hospital beds. Funeral pyres, regular and makeshift ones, burn without rest. Rivers carry bloated bodies and riverbeds throw up big stash of people buried with no ceremony, no dignity. Burning human bodies probably consume more oxygen than what could have kept those consigned to flames alive. Families have lost dear ones and providers. Friends never get to keep that ‘catch up soon’ promise, and phones don’t stop delivering the bad news. Lives are damaged beyond recovery everywhere. Lord, the wailing of people in all kinds of pain must be making you restless.
These are insane times. We cannot blame you for any of this though. It’s solely the making of man. The actions he chooses are his own, as are the consequences; you can only be a friend, philosopher and guide, and show him the ideal path. If people decide to build extravagant, vanity-fuelled statues and structures instead of health facilities, it is the choice they make. If creating or deepening political, communal and ideological chasms through orchestrated hate campaigns instead of pulling forces together to face the pandemic it is their choice. If amid death, disease and irrepairable personal losses they seek glory for undeserving individuals and opportunity for chest-thumping, Dear Lord, you can do little. You gifted humankind with intelligence, but it choose to mix it up with stupidity, ego, vanity and toxicity of its own creation. You gifted them with empathy, kindness; they replaced those with hate and malice.
This letter is addressed to you, because Lord, you are still accessible, though invisible as always. Those who should be accountable for the misery around are visible but beyond our reach. Governments are busy scoring political points and protecting their image. Disdain, sedition laws and harassment are all we get when we raise questions. Social media thugs pounce on us and rip us apart for spreading negativity when we seek answers for the deaths and the wholesale mismanagement that caused them. They expect us to be patriotic and positive when hope is sinking all around. You don’t have to answer this letter. A bit of sympathy is fine. It is a rare commodity among humans these days.
There’s talk of the virus mutating and getting more dangerous after every mutation, but Dear God, what is gone unnoticed is the mutation of human beings over the last few years. Many have morphed into rabid, venom-spewing creatures. It’s a huge zombie force out there, comprising social media gutter mouths and hate-mongers in general, always ready to attack and maul and hurt. Attack is their default setting, as it is with all indoctrinated people. In the schools they go or environment they grow in, poison is introduced into their systems in steady doses and finer human qualities like love and compassion are numbed. Since intelligence is also subdued, they grow up to be individuals who could be played as units in a grand orchestra going by the name ideology. The zombie force is ruthless. Like hounds it could be set against anybody. We have two of them – one of the Right and the other of the Left – fiercely at war right now. The mutated virus may get neutralised at some point, but the zombies are likely to be among us forever.
Lord, the creatures need to be discussed because the situation is utterly confusing for those not familiar to both ideologies. Most of the earlier generations in India have grown up in neutral political space. The Left lost political heft decades ago and is a museum species now. The emergence of the Right in reaction to it at this point is confounding to say the least. The latter promises a new India. Nobody, particularly the aggressive votaries of it, seems sure what it would look like. A Hindu Rashtra is fine, but Hindus at the throat of other Hindus all the time! So much anger and hatred at fellow countrymen! And where is that bond to hold all Indians together? Well, the Left never won India, the Right never will. But who would tell the zombies that? When a pandemic cannot drive sense into them, surely nothing will. The concern, however, is the silly conflict is destroying our present, and it will leave our future handicapped too.
Is there a way the mutation can be reversed? It’s a snowball’s chance in hell.
It must be embarrassing for you to be turned into a party mascot in every election and treated as a vote magnet. It must be more embarrassing to see the party lose in state after state despite unceasing chanting of your name in every rally. Of course, you won’t mind; you know the game. But Lord, you must ask them sometime this: If you claim to be lover of Hindus how can you expose them to disease and death for a mere election? Why didn’t you stop them from participating in the Kumbh Mela? Why can’t you be like other Hindus who are helping mankind survive the pandemic, even at the cost of their own lives?
Somewhere, Dear Lord, things have gone terribly wrong. There are bhakts and fake bhakts, and Hindus and fake Hindus. It is difficult to know who’s who. Those doing all the chest-thumping may actually be frauds weaponising you for self-serving ends. It’s hard to seek the truth out from the ungodly cacophony around. You would help someday.
For now, if possible, ask them to see sense. People are dying; they can give politics and nastiness a break.
Your True Devotee
