An Unfulfilled Quest
A boy asks his father, ‘What’s God?’
The father, watching waves washing away everything around come what may, says that God’s the mighty brown river, thrashing away and decimating everything that comes His way.
A kid asks his father, ‘What’s God?’
The father, watching everyone taken away by the thrashing waves and awaiting the same fate, says God is helicopter, that never comes when needed.
A child of a missing person, having set his waiting eyes at the door for almost a decade now, whose only prayer is yet to come true, asks his mother, ‘Where’s God?’
The mother, never taking her gaze off the door, replies, we have heard of Him but never got to feel His presence or mercy.
Now a student, the child asks Mullah, ‘Where’s God?’
He points towards the Kaaba, passing down the rosary beads one after one, and says, this is God’s house.
He lives here and smiles at the luckiest of His people circumambulating his house, people who had enough riches to travel and come there.
As luck and money go hand in hand in the world, the child can neither see himself among those lucky people nor God’s house.
But then the kid gets to know there’s nothing inside the Kaaba, except for a few ornamental lights. It’s a mere structure erected to represent a holy place.
The kid goes to Dervish, asks the same question. The Dervish tells him to look inside his heart and find God.
But the kid’s heart is brimming with so much pain that nothing else can be seen or felt.
Pain from injustice, pain from the unfair divide, pain from having to live like a lowly creature because of circumstances that are beyond his will.
He has heard that God can be seen in times of need, but his experiences tell him otherwise.
He roams around in his quest to find God, but his struggle seems futile. As the years pass by, he learns that God can neither be seen nor felt.
He still cannot know His whereabouts, as he has been unable to see Him in times of need.
But what he understood about God during his unfulfilled quest is one thing that:
God’s an enigma,
A paradox,
He might not warrant to those in dire need,
He wouldn’t help those who desperately seek it,
But he would grant to those who never asked but were happier when they got it.
He might take away the last drop from the droughty
And send off rivers to others.
He might settle scores with some for cruelty and injustice,
But let the big giants on loose still
And bring to justice those who commit minor crimes,
He gives even what’s not asked
But might ignore when one dies asking Him,
He works in mysterious ways,
Ways so mysterious, so unfathomable…
The kid has grown up now,
He moves gradually toward the end that every mortal comes to,
But his quest is yet to be fulfilled…
