Fast fasting...

Recently, I was intrigued by a well known politician fasting with much publicity, stunt and fanfare. Albeit, his fast lasted a mere few hours. And that too for a genuine cause. I seriously wished if the fast would ever become a real fast unto death kind of issue. Nay!. I was once again disappointed.

I have never held any regard for the sufferings of these people until some time back. However, having aged and mellowed, I started looking at things in different light in the last few years. Humanity and realism hit me hard when I was busy jay walking on the life freeway.

And on this crisis, I feel some of the photographs I happened to see can simply rock the star liner cruises we are all in. And it is not an overstatement.

While most of us are yet to be satiated with our innate desires to grab more wealth, the other side of the spectrum reveals a very contrasting picture. People, families, children, kids, babies, lost lives, maimed, impaired and so on. All of them indiscriminatingly caught in the web of geo-political (and ethnical) conflict. What is important for such people ? They have become mere instruments at the hands of someone who could provide shelter for a week or a month, a bottle of water or a packet of stale food. What is to come beyond that - nobody knows.

When someone tells me to dream of a better life, I imagine what do these people dream about if they ever did? Dreams occur only when you have a peaceful sleep. Don't it. Otherwise, it may only be a nightmare.

Despite my middle-class upbringing, thanks to my parents who nailed rivets on my legs to stay grounded quite early on, I still feel there have been times when I had forgotten to see the other side of the world. A tasty meal and shelter to me, considered a necessity, happens to be a luxury to many. It has often led me question the presence of divinity and its omnipotent force to protect innocent people. I question my Hindu deities "How is it that so many people have committed sins to be born in such a troubled piece of land?" or is it that "Only sinners have been carefully made to be born there as a pay back to their earlier deeds?"

Answers to these questions are simply beyond my reach and understanding. Both spiritually and logically. Any amount of reasoning only flies out of the window and gets quickly swallowed by the preying sea gull.

However, I compare the present to the future. And I will strongly want to believe that the present generation Sinners who enact dramas from emotional outcry to being institutional saviors and 'Fast - Fasters' will duly have to get their pay back in their next incarnations. I am sure God is busy tilling a piece of land somewhere in far outreach and seeding with enough trouble to let these butchers be born there and experience the pain for themselves.

Although I feel I definitely cannot make a difference to their lives, I wish and hope life gets better for the innocents. For that to happen soon - God has to wake up.

He has been quite lazy for years and he rather make a difference right now, right away and rightly!