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

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

      Delete
  3. 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. 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. 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. 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

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...

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...

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...