THE GREATEST NOVEL EVER WRITTEN

A gentle disclaimer before even starting this post would be to please read and analyze it with open mindedness. It is just a free dialogue and not meant to hurt/disrespect anybody’s sentiments.

What could be so sensitive that before talking about it requires such apologies and clearance in anticipation?

The one thing that was meant to bring a code of conduct into our life, but it is nowadays (esp with the approaching elections) being used as a (brownie) point in everybodys  personal manifesto- RELIGION.

Had i written this blog a month back, it would be smeared with a lot of strong and raging sentiments reflected by a person of science who are loosely categorized under atheists. We question the natural phenomenon so we must be non-believers in God. That’s the common perception. It might have its justification actually. If we would have not questioned the world around us and left everything to be explained by a super power then Darwin, Feyman and Mendel would have died jobless!

However, lets keep our biases aside. As core to our being is curiosity to find answers so is also the feeling to have faith and to believe. Both these feelings make up Human Nature. So why should we choose between them? If I belong to a class of society that proved the phenomenon behind water droplets acting as prisms for sunlight to give rise to the beautiful rainbow does it mean I have to opt out of believing in the beautiful luck of having rain and sun simultaneously? I certainly hope not.

But what is it about religion that brings a plethora of complications with it?

Refer to a video post on my company’s facebook page BIODEALS(www.facebook.com/biodealsdelhi(www.facebook.com/biodealsdelhi) showing  an interview clip of Sir Richard Dawkins about myth and religion. He says (a little bit arrogantly though..but everybody has their style about showing their passion!) that he feels that the various stories in religion (again, he talks of Christianity but I would extrapolate to any religion) are mere myths because there are no scientific findings to suggest that those events actually took place. Yet, they are important to be told to a child because of the sheer joy of expanding his imagination.

Agreed. A five year old who doesn’t know about what life holds for him needs to be carved into a believer because its his faith that will ease his journey through life. Not only personally, but even professionally too if he has faith in achieving he is more likely to become an achiever.

If everything is so simple, then why has religion been so abused? (Pardon my language, but there is no other decent word that correctly applies here!)

GOD, I feel, is our faith. It is and should be a very personal equation. For me the smile on my child keeps my faith alive. For someone else it might be his ailing wife or the beauty of a panaromic landscape. Religion on the other hand is a means. Thats more generic. The stories can be applied and told to a larger community who can sculpt it to suit their own personal equilibrium with faith.

The problem arises when these stories fall into the hand of haters. If you have faith (in anything you derive peace from), you are sure to be a lover. You love and respect other peoples’ faith too. A godman said in a fantastic bollywood movie ‘Oh my God’- “We are a community of God FEARING not God LOVING.” We have picked up a beautifully intended entity like religion and associated it with everything negative. Random rituals, extravagant consequences for non-believers and irrational fear of the supreme power. Such meaningless complications have arisen because religion, unfortunately, has become one of the most lucrative businesses in the world. Pick up any sales book and you will find an underlying commandment for high sale value- sell against your customers’ fear. Highlight how helpless/despondent your customer is till now and then slowly introduce your product to him so that he feels that he should purchase it right away. And, ladies and gentleman, that’s how religion is also being sold today! A few Godmen with great entreuprenual skills interpret our religion in a particular way and serve it to us. And we lap it up without a second thought. Our religion has been corrupted, my friends. And this corruption is affects us worse than the corruption new political parties are rampantly trying to eradicate. This is psychological corruption. Its far deep rooted than any economical corruption.

But tell me one thing- if you fall prey to a quack treating you, do you change the doctor or lose faith in medicine as a whole? Similarly, if you don’t find solace in whatever is being told you about the faith you are born into I suggest that you start on a journey of self exploration. I can be so confident because of a recent encounter with religion. I emphasise- encounter with religion not faith. Faith is something that I have already developed over time. Lots of experiences showed me the power of positivity, love and giving. But its religion that has erupted as my hero in recent times. And it is this clarity that I want to share with you.

A recent huge achievement that was evading us for a long time made me undertake an oath that I knew in my heart was meaningless to me at that time. I promised that if things work out in our favor I would go to my local Gurudwara everyday. Something that was quite against my core of bribing GOD to get something. It is this bribing that is hacking into the helpless peoples’ emotions to build the vast business empire centered around religion. However, being helpless myself at that point I took this pledge. And surprisingly, we got through with flying colors!!

Hence, started my tryst with religion. The first few days seemed meaningless and I failed to see what my calling was. Just as I was about to dismiss and cement my disbelief in religion, I thought of going one day and doing what I wanted to do in the Gurudwara. If I dint want to bow or bend here and there, I would not. And that’s when I discovered the true meaning and need of religion in our life.

I started going there regularly. On entering the premises I said a casual “hi” to God and sat down to write. I find a lot of peace in writing-  almost anything. And these few days taught me that my religion is actually writing. I just go there and sit and write. Slowly, I started believing the need to bow down to the religious book. It was more knowledgeable of life than I was. I write for clarity. And since the book had more clarity than me, it sure deserved respect. Hence, I started bowing to it on entering the Gurudwara.

I started having dialogues in my head with the religious book in front of me. Stating my doubts, concerns, fears and joys; I started getting replies from my new friend- the book. I need to confess that I have still not opened the Granth Sahib (religious book) but it somehow started giving me answers. I wrote for hours sometimes. No matter how much time I spent there, I realized that I left the place with much more peace and clarity irrespective of having or not donated money or bowed down here or there. I was just more calm. More serene. And I loved it.

Into my second week, I realized something profound. I had not bribed God by taking that oath. On the contrary, I had been bribed into this religious experience. The achievement that was bestowed on us now seemed just an excuse to start my dialogues with God. I was no longer doing it for the bet. I was doing my daily rounds for myself.

Yet again, God has no form for me. Not human at all! But I slowly started seeing that religion took a story form to make it interesting. Ask any child about Alice and Wonderland and she has nothing but awe about the story and remembers it in pictorial memory. Same logic.

I started seeing that these “random” rituals had their roots in being an excuse to enter a premise that was so full of positivity, love and serenity. I realized that God infact is far more helpless than we are because he has been misconstrued into a very negative form by us Humans. God might be there for the same reason since birth of Humanity- to spread a message of love and positivity. But religion has been surely killed by our race.

And somehow the death of religion has been misinterpreted as death of faith. No yoga, no breathing exercise, no hours of hymns can help if you just do it blindly or half heartedly. Similarly, you will have all sorts of negativity towards religion till you don’t research it at your end.

My religion was writing my thoughts in a calm place. It made me more humane and loving. And the path to this was shown through a stupid bet with God (or whatever it is that you have faith in).

I suggest that lets reinvent the wheel here. It doesn’t matter which religion you are born into. They are all the same. Start your secret affair with religion. Secret because its just meant for you. Personalize it, indivdualise it.

So pick up the religious book lying in your bookshelf at home and start reading it the way you want to. It will only tell you of positive things. No harm in reading a story with a positive moral, right?

And slowly you will see what I now feel. You will realize that it’s the greatest novel ever written.