Today all the dailies flashed headlines of the barbaric bomb attack on people of high society in most luxurious hotels of Mumbai, and the papers said at least 80 people were feared dead, including some of the highly placed government officials. What bothers and worries me as I open the newspapers each day is the number of persons killed each day... violence, hatred, jealousy, the reason may be anything, and it is so easy to take the life of a neighbour that a very thought of it is enough to start the pellets shooting in the sky.
Needless to say the greatest casualty of our times is the human species; I may be exaggerating if I were to say that there are more people killed today than the number of people dying of ripe old age. In fact many in our society find no reason to kill another, and yet when their spirits are low, they dare to do the impossible. The weeklies are full of stories of children killing their parents, mothers tossing of their children in the river, whole family taking recourse to self-poisoning, and there does not seem to be an end to all these.
I am made to pause for a moment and think what is my life worth? Is the human life a dispensable commodity, like a tissue or a sanitarywares? It is only those who have valued the beauty of human life would ever make an attempt to preserve it. Those who think that they are a burden to the society and the world at large, would think the whole of humanity in such a position. They would not hesitate to lay down their lives for a silly and worthless cause, and in the bargain show their anger and vengence on innocent people living around them. It may also be due to utter frustration they may go through which might land them in such an unpredictable situation.
My life on earth is a perhaps the greatest gift of God, and I have no right to take it out by my own free will... My life, to put it figuratively, belongs to the universe, and I have a specific role to play in the cosmic ordering of things, as the Bhagavad Gita would say. When I begin to cherish the beauty and wonder of my life, the world around me begins to smile, I begin to see a thousand hues and colors in them, and it is then that even a blue sky could take me far beyond the horizon, to a land where I can be perfectly in peace with myself and the world around me.
Am I proposing an impossible proposition? Today I would like to forget the world around me; sit quietly all by myself in a "secret" place, far from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and spend just two minutes, taking an inward journey into the core of my being... just I and myself, and no one else. Let me look at myself as I truly am, and listen to the silent whipsers of my heart, the colorful paintings of my spirit in the space before my eyes, the throbs of every grass and plants, the sheer joy of living in every birds and animals... In humble submission, I can hear my heart cry with joy, Thank you Lord, for the gift of Life!
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