Skip to main content

A brief history of gods


In the beginning were bacteria. They were bored. Millions of years of life will bore anyone. Even bacteria. They wanted escape from boredom. In spite of volcanic eruptions and other entertainments. In spite tectonic plates shifting whimsically. In spite of falling comets and asteroids.

Boredom is the most powerful agent of change. It can kill you. Or it can make you create new life. New life came. In various forms. Plants. They were bored soon. They longed to meet mate. And the mate was born.

Dinosaurs. They found it difficult to mate. Snakes crawled around and cockroaches flew around.  Some mated. Some devoured some others. The lion came claiming kingship. The lion was soon bored. The ape came mocking his boredom and running around on trees that the lion could not climb after mating and eating or eating and mating. When the lion was insulted enough into genetic humiliation, the ape descended from the tree and became man.

Man was bored sooner than all others. In spite of condoms. And other entertainments. So he sat down to meet and discuss. Brainstorming led by a CEO. “Let us create a god,” the most creative brain suggested. And they created a god in their own image.

Xerox copies of the god soon gained popularity. And they assumed new shapes. Avatars, the creators called them just for the sake of authority. Authority comes from the author of the new story.

New stories. New gods. New authors.

Somebody wanted to be the leader. He said, “We shall have only one god. All other gods are false.” A lot of blood flowed. Down many a stream.

History continues.  Gods rule.


Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniJuly 26, 2016 at 8:27 PM

    One of the leaders even suggested worshipping three goddesses but then put the blame on the two horned devil. And thus even the satans were invented and a choice to either follow the god or follow the satan was presented. I mean where is the NOTA option? Loved this work of yours.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 26, 2016 at 8:30 PM

      The simple truth is there are no gods, no devils, except those created by people who want to boss over us.

      Delete
  2. umashankarJuly 27, 2016 at 5:58 PM

    Your account is brief but succinct. However, I have a humble suggestion that you modify the penultimate sentence. After the tribal who proclaimed he will be the only God and all gods were false, History stuck. Because his followers have sworn not to move even a millimetre further.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 27, 2016 at 6:46 PM

      Thanks, US. True, history is dead in a way different from what Fukuyama predicted.

      Delete
  3. sunaina sharmaJuly 27, 2016 at 7:13 PM

    From bacteria to God is quite a journey.....:).....And everyday, new bacteria are on the rise....then there will be new gods who will fight with the old ones...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 27, 2016 at 7:21 PM

      The history of life begins with bacteria and I think will end with them too. If man never existed, the earth would have been a rich planet in many ways. But the animals wouldn't have the brains to enjoy that richness. That's another paradox. So gods had to be born to provide all the entertainment. Violent though it be!

      Delete
  4. Fascinating QuestJuly 27, 2016 at 11:05 PM

    I don't think we will ever agree on 'God', but I like reading your writings - I like the way you express.
    I wish things were not so, that we would feel the need to negate God for peace.

    --Nimi
    www.NimiArora.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 28, 2016 at 7:38 AM

      Gods and their people have done much harm to me. i can't ever think of god(s) as anything but sinister creatures.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Insecurity and Exclusivism

“ Hindu khatare mein hai.” This was one of the first slogans that accompanied the emergence of Narendra Modi on the national scene. It means Hindus are in Danger . It reveals a deep-rooted feeling of insecurity. Hindus constitute an overwhelming majority in India – 80%. All the high positions in governance, judiciary, academics, any significant place, are occupied by Hindus. Yet the slogan was born. Strange? It will be facile to argue that Modi used this slogan and its concomitant hatred of Muslims and Christians as a political weapon for winning votes. True, he was successful in that; he rose to the highest political post in the country using minority-bashing. But the hatred did not end with that achievement; rather it spread outward and became more exclusive. Muslim and European rulers of India were booted out from the country’s history books and wherever else possible like the names of roads and institutions. With vengeance. Now there is a concerted effort going on to place In...
10 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

You Don’t Know the Sky

I asked the bird to lend me wings. I longed to fly like her. Gracefully. She tilted her head and said, “Wings won’t be of any use to you because you don’t know the sky.” And she flew away. Into the sky. For a moment, I was offended. What arrogance! Does she think she owns the sky? As I watched the bird soar effortlessly into the blue vastness, I began to see what she meant. I wanted wings, not the flight. Like wanting freedom without the responsibility that comes with it. The bird had earned her wings. Through storms, through hunger, through braving the odds. She manoeuvred her way among the missiles that flew between invisible borders erected by us humans. She witnessed the macabre dance of death that brought down cities, laid waste a whole country. Wings are about more than flights. How often have you perched on the stump of a massive tree brought down by a falling warhead and wept looking at the debris of civilisations? The language of the sky is different from tha...
13 comments
Read more