Ye Olde God

    04-Apr-2020
K Radhakumar
    God is dead – Nietzsche
My grandfather believed in God,
In every sense of the word.
He lived to the ripe old age of 99,
His passionate belief not at all shaken
By the two World Wars
And the great upheavals of the last century.
He often knelt down and prayed;
I also saw and heard him talking
To the unseen creator of the universe
As if He were present.
‘Why this passionate belief?’ I wondered.
My daddy put it simply –
‘Beyond reason.’
So he said
And shot me a sideways glance
That said it all.
Dear me!
I could not put my feeling into words.

Where do I stand on the matter of god?
Mine is a philosophical god
Very different from my grandfather’s.
Sometimes I think of him at night
When the sky is full of angst,
When I go through an identity crisis
And my life seems to have lost all meaning.
Never in all my life
Have I remembered him in my ecstatic moments.
Does my god come with coronavirus
The newest virus, the death incarnate
That kills people all over the world?
Nobody goes to temple on Monday.
Nor on any day of the week, for that matter
And pray for divine intervention.
Social distancing, quarantine –
These are not mere concepts
But are a way of life.
There is no place for God
In the overall scheme of things
Of the brave new World.
Here God id dead and buried
As a saviour  of mankind.
These days he is very ill, poor old thing
And is more dead than alive.