Just Why Should It Be So

There are billions of people on earth connected through a network of humanity, compassion and care. Dormant but thankfully much less visible are the base instincts of violence and the urge to hurt others. These gross instincts are those human reflexes which act as the proverbial pebble, lobbed in the lake and create unwelcome ripples in people’s lives. Reflexes, because I believe mostly these instincts are not premeditated. Their nuisance had been equally recognised by God and man which resulted in holy edicts and a stream of punitive, preventive laws, but these were never enough. Since they have not been able to stop such painful eruptions, that brings one to a cardinal question. If there is a divine design in creation of the universe and the mankind on Earth then who does and should control tremors which tend to rock the societal equilibrium on Earth? For the present moment, the Universe can take care of itself, as right now we are talking of human pain and misery.

However it has been fully established by scientists that the universe is immeasurably vast, is perpetually on the move and expanding. That there is no way innumerable celestial bodies can be counted. Despite this truly gigantic mass and massive spatial movement there is not a single major accident to disrupt or destroy the universal order which is so well choreographed, regulated and controlled. If that could be done why not affairs of the humanity on a tiny, indistinct planet in the tail of one of the possibly hundreds of thousands of galaxies in space?

Defenders of divinity might jump to the podium to pronounce that defaulters will be sent to hell and the righteous to heaven. Agreed, but what about the havoc and misery these defaulters wreak in the lives of unsuspecting and vulnerable men and women, children and the aged on earth? Any repair works, compensations or consolations except a solemn promise for the next world and a reminder to be patient? Is that enough? No it is not when lives are destroyed, peace is shattered and irreparable damage is inflicted both materially and morally. This looks something like a kind of justice delayed and a veiled signal to put up with it.But just why should it be so? Here is a glimpse of what is happening around us at the hands of a few based on one’s observations.

There is an influential criminal who is known to have a zoo of lions, cheetahs and wolves. He is rumoured to sometimes feed these beasts his enemies, the ones he wants to see out of his way. There is the others who who sever hands, crush bones, burn alive or sprinkle acid upon servants, irksome daughters in law, fastidious mothers or difficult brothers. Domestic servants, kiln workers, maids and peasant families working in the fields form a large mass of humanity very vulnerable to excess and repression both. Some time ago a school teacher was brutally tortured, his legs broken in a village in Sheikhupura by the local MPA just because he defied him on a minor issue. There also was a little girl a student of Class 5 who was run down and torn apart by Wadera’s hunting hounds while going through his fields in Khairpur. Hundreds of infants die every month of malnutrition and hunger in Tharparkar and no one seems to be moved. Tell me will that teacher ever walk normally,the girl come to life or Thar infants giggle again?Who knows the extent and scale of their families’ trauma whether they are intact or already shattered? Who can say what punitive actions were taken against the offenders? While all this was happening, nature was quiet and can somebody say when will it take a retribution action if not now?

There is a young adolescent lad in our neighborhood who plays cricket with kids in our lane.He is very well mannered, neat and bright like a perfect child. He and his mother were abandoned by his heartless father years ago who thought she was not rich enough, though a first cousin.I can always detect a deep glint of melancholy and yearning in his eyes every time I see him; yearning for the strong presence of a father and melancholy over the undeserved hardship and his mother’s back breaking lonely struggle to raise him.Fortunately she lives safely with her parents but stitches clothes for others and runs a small tuition class to make an honourable living.Her husband having a time of his life unscathed elsewhere.I know an officer who died along with his wife in a car crash leaving behind three daughters, the eldest seven years of age, a half blind mother and nobody else to take care of her. What is that great divine wisdom in this punishing arrangement would somebody with his heart in the right pace tell us?

Having seen my daughter wade through a similar living hell one knows very well how devastating it is for the right minded female herself and what kind of tumult and emotional destruction it causes to the immediate family and her child if there is one. Strangely but quite senselessly our laws are silent on challenging the male’s unilateral right to divorce and provide no relief to the affected female against wrongdoing except a degrading right to a ridiculous maintenance allowance. This is one typical instance where a perpetrator is granted the benefit of good intention ab initio. What kind of vicious injustice , in fact, cold insensitivity is this that we have allowed to go on happening to the very foundation of our society; the basic family unit and in that the pivot of the family ;the mother? If there is a religious permission or medieval cover to this atrocity it must be debated and remedies found to this mounting menace.Every third family suffers this pain but still there is no cry for reform against this collective sadism?

Every time I see a mother with young kids, a little girl with her twin braids prancing about on her shoulders playing her innocent games, young girls going to schools or children tagging along their parents for shopping tidbits , one shudders and prays to God to protect them from the latent but generally approved cruelty of our society.They are so horribly vulnerable. What one has quoted are but a few examples out of a vast inventory of unmitigated pain and dysfunction in our society .Elsewhere the nature and shape of this social stress may be quite different but it will be there nonetheless.

We now know fairly clearly that in this misery and pain perpetuated over the weak and the vulnerable in the name of social order and religious permissiveness, there is no real relief for the affected individual or the society except pity, charity or consolations but mostly contempt. .Therefore there is no point in the misplaced nobility in persevering under persecution, patience under permissive religious sanctions , hoping for divine intervention in near future or reward hereinafter. Callousness prevails, lives are lost, families shatter and little white homes built on dreams and hopes destroyed. Misery so pervasively inflicted seemingly is without retribution, never compensated and fissures of discord, grief and conflict go on expanding in concentric circles.

Agreed, there are noble examples of human perseverance too.In their hour of persecution Israelis were led by Prophet Moses, Muslims by Prophet Mohammad, Pandavs by Lord Krishna and Biharis by Lord Buddha.But they were prophets and men of great substance and divinity. Prophethood has ended and also there will be no more Buddhas meditating under the Banyan tree or Krishnas leading the righteous charge. This is a real world of ordinary mortals and should be treated as such.In short human sufferings have multiplied exponentially. If universe can be so well regulated then just why should this small world of ours not be managed as well, God?

(Published in Monthly Tribute International on 01-04-2019)