The One Above

         Rains. It's always a beautiful season in India. Well, as long as it rains for less than five minutes in one shot or else there's water-logging everywhere. This was one of those days. It had rained for a good hour. Not heavy showers or cats and dogs, but just a swift, wind-less pour. It was enough to turn some of the streets into ankle-deep ponds, though. It was night time, and I was on my way back from work when I happened to come across such a street. It was fine for me though, because some blessed braniac had laid down pavement stones at every step so that the commuters wouldn't face problems while passing through, but the rest of the street was pretty much a mess. And while walking through that mess, I saw three kids playing in the water. They splashed water against each other, pushed each other down into it, and piled up on each other while taking turns as to who remained at the bottom. They laughed and jumped everywhere. They wore nothing but a ragged pair of dirty shorts each, and appeared to have not eaten in a long time. I was surprised at how the simple pleasure of playing in muddy water could cloud the hunger of days and the struggle of the nights that their parents may have spent feeling guilty about not being able to provide. I had to walk away from there; I couldn't stand it.

         I walked along, and home was just a few minutes away when it started drizzling again. Well, it was slightly stronger than a drizzle as I was forced to take my umbrella out. I tried so hard but the umbrella wouldn't open, so I stood under a shelter nearby trying to achieve that feat. While I stood there, I heard this jittery sound coming from around there, somewhere. I turned to my right and saw a small boy sitting down against the wall, wet with the rain. He had a torn and ragged raincoat spread over him, but he shivered in the cold. Drops of water trickled down his bare body, and he looked so hungry. I managed to somehow open my umbrella as it was time to go. I took a step further towards home and away from the little boy, when I felt this wave of something wash over me(I don't know what it was, but it was something). I turned back and walked towards him. He recoiled more and more as my footsteps became louder towards him, and I saw torture in his eyes. I spread my umbrella over him, gave him a half-eaten pack of biscuits, shared one last look with him and walked away in the rain. And that was it.

         I spent the rest of the night standing at the window and staring at the skies. I waited hours, for any sign of Him. Any indication, any fluctuation in temperature or any sight of a shooting star. Just anything, anything at all to let me know that someone's there, somewhere. Watching. Watching over all this that's happening. So that I could ask Him how He could stand it. There was a lot of pain to go about everywhere we looked. Umpteen amount of torture. Innumerable amount of spite, insinuation and ill-will. I wanted to ask Him what the little boy by the shelter had done to deserve such a horrible fate. Or what those little kids had done to be happy with so little, that one would feel sorry for them. And so I did. I asked those questions. To the skies, the stars, and everything in between. But everything stayed the same. There was no response, and that's when I gave up. I remembered a story.

         There was a communist group once, a fraternity of sorts who had visited India somewhere in the 1960s. They were all atheists, and belonged to Russia. They came by to do a report on this country and on how it runs before the Prime Minister made any sort of business deal with our country. They wanted to get a closer look at things to see whether the country is worth it. They came, they lived here for six months, and they went back as changed men. They resigned from their jobs without telling the Prime Minster as to why they're doing it once they went back, quit communism and became followers of some or the other religion. A journalist interviewed each of them and all said the same thing. He printed it in the next day's newspaper,and that's when the world, including the Russian Prime Minister, found out. They said that they enjoyed their stay here, but this country lacked discipline or ethics. It was disorganized and pitiful. And them being practical men, could not fathom how a country so disorganized could run at all. They said that there had to be a superpower somewhere in the universe, which helped run this country, and so they started believing in God and quit all other worldly things.

         I remember hearing this story when I was in school, and I'd reached home after a tiring day. My dad was an atheist, and my mom a Muslim. My dad sipped on a cup of tea in the living room on a humid evening and I sat there on the floor, playing with Hotwheels or something. I was intrigued by the story of the communists, and so I told my dad about the story. At the end of it, I was all like

"But that's stupid. God doesn't really exist, does He?" pretty sure that he would agree with me, him being an atheist and all.

"Who said so? Of course He does. He's not where people go to find Him. He doesn't exist in mosques, churches or temples. He lives inside us. Always has, and always will. All we need to do is recognise Him"

         It didn't make sense to me at the time. Not one bit. "How could he say that if he was an atheist?" I asked myself. But there was no answer. But it makes sense now. Why my dad believes that God lives inside us. Why he's an atheist. Why when we commit a sin, it is said that we are polluting the place where God resides. It's because my dad believes that God is not a superpower. God is not a light that created the Heavens and Hell. God is not someone who forgives or punishes. It's us. We choose our path, our destination, and everything we do along the way. We choose to be the best of humanity, or the worst. God is something that lives inside us. Someone that tells us what right and wrong is. He is the best of ourselves, the supernatural fragment that lives inside us. Our spirit. Something that science cannot explain, or math cannot calculate. A voice inside, that grows louder with the number of good deeds.

All we need to do is recognise Him.