GOD DOESN’T HAVE A FACE

GOD DOESN’T HAVE A FACE

No , I am not a cynic, neither an atheist or even an intellectual thinker. All I am is but a simple human being looking out for goodness in life and appreciating simplicity for its lack of artificiality. The first shower of the summer, washing away the layers of dust from the green carpeted mountains or even the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a lovely colourful butterfly fills me with as much joy as does the laughter of a child, the yawn of a newborn or a tooth less smile of an aged simpleton.

But this is not what I was talking about. It was about God. So, what about Him? The inevitable question would, at this juncture probably be “Who is God, or What is God?” This having been asked over and over since time immemorial by philosophers and seers has drawn up long discussions, and huge volumes have been derived of those discussions. But as I mentioned before, my lack of philosophic intellectualism stood as a rock hard and quite impenetrable wall between the comprehension or belief of those volumes of explanations. I have always failed to understand their tall claims of understanding the “wonderful” subject called God. I must admit that I have always been a little less intelligent in many matters.

So, in my unintelligent quest, I have often found myself asking- has anyone seen God, so as to reproduce the features with such great confidence? How could we say that Durga had ten hands, looked quite a killer and had three eyes? Or that Ravana had multiple heads,(wonder what happened to him in a bout of flu!), and Krishna was such a handsome and sought after gentleman among the women folks, as depicted on various calendars? I know the questions are dim-witted, but what else can one expect from an upstart?

But my dear friends, strange that it may seem to you, I tell you, I have seen God’s face. Yes I have seen God’s face and it was not once the same!

A beggar woman returning home one day, expectantly dug for food in a garbage bin down the corner of the street. Food she got none , but what she got , brought tears of joy to her old and tired eyes. She had now found a reason to live longer, she had found someone to live for – an abandoned child, fighting for existence in the garbage. Perhaps an illegitimate child of a legitimate coward of our so called commendable social strata, who found it easy to leave the child to die, forgetting the episode as a nightmare that should be thrown away like the child, in order to lead a happy and content life. Riches could not buy the child a mother or nurture, but an unfortunate desperation to struggle to exist , showered the child with more than what he was born with. There have I seen the face of god, in that woman, no “ mother” , there I have seen a halo, not of heavenly light but of a divine hope, that both would somehow survive in this cruel world where there was no one for anyone. There was God in all glory and grace, there was he with all his benevolence.

Battlefield, - the ultimate realistic satire on human civilization and an advent of modernism. Day in and day out we read a lot about incidents on battlefields- of heroism, of illogical moves, of fatal deaths, of allies and foes. One such incident that I had read years ago, left an everlasting impression on my mind.

A soldier found a fatally wounded enemy among the smoking battlefields, clutching to a bloody photograph of his daughter and wife and waiting for death with pain. Prisoner of war! The soldier’s instinct told him that he should not be spared and charged towards him with his killer weapon. As he drew near, he saw a strange look in the eyes of the dying man. No it was not a prayer to spare his life, but that of a pain of separation from loved ones, a feeling where you lose before the game is lost. He clutched on to the photograph as though “that” was his life. With a last effort , he looked up to say something. The whole thing baffled the soldier who had come to finish the wounded man off. He felt a surge of emotion like a lump in his throat. It could have been him too! Suddenly he found himself thinking of his children at home while a tear dropped from his eyes. He wondered , why this war, who wins anyway? Throwing his weapon down, he knelt beside the dying man and all that he could hear was “ I loved them a lot mann, pray for them. God bless you ! And he died. The soldier was given a worthy burial by this enemy friend of the battle field and the blood stained photograph retained by him in the hope that if one day he met them, he would tell them how much they were loved and that their loved one died a hero’s death.

Here I think was the presence of God. The soldier who was lucky to be alive may have been a very unsuccessful warrior but was truly the image of the almighty. There in his face was the face of God.

Similarly, I have found the face of God in each infant’s innocent smile , each sacrifice made, each man’s struggle for existence in the righteous way. No I had searched for him in mandirs and churches, I did not find him there. All I found there was people spreading hatred, selling their souls, and making the shrines a market place where the name of God is sold for cash.

God’s face is present in each good thing that happens, every morning drop of sunshine, every dew drop and every moonlit night. God is amongst us in us, omnipotent, only we need eyes to see, to realize. God thus has not one, but many faces. If only we tried to know how to seek and where to seek, we would have found him and having found him with different faces, we would have forgotten to hate and curse, turning the world into heaven , our heavenly home, His home.

So does God not have many faces and never once the same ?