Waiting for Godot!

Those who have studied American literature would remember the title, a modern English play, belonging to the genre of ‘abstract drama’ by Samuel Beckett. This is considered as a prototype of the abstract drama, which captures the absurdity of life in modern times. The entire drama revolves around a person waiting for another person named Godot! There is no forward or backward movement in the drama, at the end of the play, the audience are exactly in the same place where they were at the beginning, and so also the characters.

While on the one hand, the modern world swears by speed, on the other it is typified by endless waiting. Every moment of waiting has been added to the quest for better speed. We want quick solutions, and waiting as it were becoming a thing of the past. There is no one who really wants to wait. Waiting for three hours to get the parts of computers we have paid for, is not just a thing we can take so easily. People taking their own sweet time to pull out the required parts from the store, and placing them together so that they could pack off the customer in half an hour is an art which is alien to the boys working in this biggest computer shop in the whole of Eastern India. But who will teach them the art of getting things faster than they are used to?

But is it not time that we just throw our watches and clocks and just flow with time, following the course of the sun and the moon? Some years ago, when I decided to stay with the Santal tribals, I did the same, and I was happy without knowing the time, while staying in a village, where there is no way of knowing the hour of the day. What I could say was night and day, morning and evening and noon. I would look at the sun, and would guess the time for my meals. It gives a different feeling when we forget for a moment the human-made indicators of time. Time and space cannot be measured in human terms and categories; one has to let oneself to flow in the current in order to feel the cosmic flow.

Waiting is associated with a lot of pain and suffering, and every waiting reminds the persons concerned that there is a great expectation, though the expectation may not end up with a positive result. Like in the case of Waiting for Godot, at the end no one might turn up. The entire waiting might come to naught, but then the waiting per se has a meaning, which cannot be separated from the act itself. Fortunately when I went to the shop today, I had not worn my wrist watch, and so was less conscious of every passing hour, but then there were wall-clocks which reminded me that I had already spent four hours waiting in that cozy room, with a lot of men and women crisscrossed, each one minding their own business.

Waiting is a sweet and sour candy that we are given, even when we are not in a mood to chew it. The taste however is not in the candy, but in the tongue and the mind which provides the taste. If your waiting is on someone or something that you would be delighted to, then the candy would taste sweet; if you are waiting to meet a bad news, or bad person, whom you would have liked to miss, but are forced to meet, then the candy would taste sour. You cannot throw the candy altogether, because each moment of our life comes with a waiting, with a sugar coated candy, and it is for me to make it taste sweet or sour! Waiting after all is not a physical phenomenon, but very much a psychological one.

Call to be a Cosmic Force

Tribal communities in India and elsewhere are often accused of indulging in superstitious 'ancestor worship', which I consider is a great injustice done to their cultural repertois; only the persons who are ignorant of their faiths and belief system can make such a derogatory remark. There is nothing as rich and noble in other religious traditions, as the tribal concept of 'ancestor worship'. Maybe it is time that the major religions look at this notion sympathetically, and borrow from them what may enrich their own belief system.

I really do not know how other tribal communities value and believe in ancestor worship, I know for sure that among the Santal tribals, it is one of the key aspects of their belief, so much so one of their festivals -Sohrae - is closely associated with them. While the harvest festival bid goodbye to the departed souls, they also bring them home, to the Manjhithan, where the ancestral spirits are to dwell permanently.

Those who die, in other words, are not lost forever, but are brought back to the very village community, and they claim their due place there. Every time a Santal offers sacrifices to the deities, the ancestral spirits have theie due share; every time a Santal drinks handipaura, the rice beer, he/she is expected to offer a few drops first before taking the first sip. These spirits also have the responsibility to safeguard the village from any natural calamity or danger. Is it not a noble concept, that all the dear departed are there in the village, hovering over the air!

During a ritual called bandan (bone-drowning ceremony), the dear departed during the liturgical year, are given a beautiful farewell. The relative who carries the collar-bone of the departed collected after the cremation, is given all the little pleasures the man/woman loved so much. The villagers offer small niceties in the name of the departed soul. When their bones are drowned in a river, they join the cosmic forces, and become one with nature, not only symbolically, but also literally.

We are part of the cosmos, and whether living or dead, we are part of the forces which operate and govern the cosmos. It is good to remember this, for there is a temptation to consider that an untimely death is a loss for the world; no, it cannot be. All are present in the cosmos, and join the eternal, undying, undiminishing power of the cosmos. The evil that men do lives after them; and their good too! They are written large on the clouds and trees, birds and beasts, air and water. And if you wish to believe, the other name for these cosmic forces is God!