It’s been more than a week since disaster struck the state of Uttarakhand in India. Everyone’s opinion on how many people died in this tragedy of Global repercussions varies. But I’m not here to discuss the facts, only my thoughts. My condolences go out to all the victims, direct as well as indirect.
I’ve heard people question the incident as, “Why would God do this to innocents on a pilgrimage?” I’ve heard it called an act of God, a man made disaster, nature’s backlash. I refer to it simply as a consequence; A consequence of our acts, our blatant disregard, our priorities, the operative word being ‘our’. I refuse to let my mind accept a supernatural force as its cause. For me, it’s like giving up the notion of independent thought, like surrendering my fate to something beyond my slightest control. I believed when Mario Puzo said, “Accidents don’t happen to people who take them as personal insults.” Acts of God, I don’t.
I do believe in God. I believe in Him as an idea. Just as every idea has a life of its own, my God is alive and ever-evolving. I believe in Him to be like art. Like literature, He can shape minds. Like music, He can influence our thoughts and expressions. Like a poem, He can’t really be understood in all His aspects. I believe that my God set me free with my choices, as long as I pay their price. He doesn’t preside over matters of life and death. He doesn’t decide which buildings collapse, and which ‘miraculously’ survive. We choose progress over nature every day, as we’ve done over past centuries. We decide to build temples that would stand for centuries, and roads that would be washed away in the next rains. We destroyed those towns. We killed those people. And we are the only ones who must bear the terrible shame.
