Innocence

One of my friends in the village narrated an interesting anecdote. He heard a villager pray to his god one day for a strong wind in the night so that one of the trees in his neighbour’s farm would fall. “That would give me firewood for a month,” the villager explained when questioned.

His neighbour is a very kind man who lets him take firewood whenever dry branches of trees fall in the farm. “But why don’t you ask your god to solve your problem without wishing harm for your kind neighbour?” My friend questioned the villager who knew the neighbour too.

The villager said, “That’s true. I never thought of that.”

The villager was quite innocent. He really didn’t mean harm to his neighbour whom he held in high regard. But his firewood was running out and winds were quite common in the area and the winds brought down branches of trees frequently. It was only fair to ask god to send a wind in the nearest farm. It would be easier to carry the firewood home from the nearest farm. He wasn’t wishing any evil for anyone.

“Maybe the guy is not so innocent,” I suggested when my friend related this to me. “Maybe he knew his god was not magnanimous enough to perform some outlandish miracle.” A wind is not much of a miracle here.

My friend who is familiar with my cynicism even about gods laughed. “Of course, it is more sensible to pray for what can really happen. After all, winds are regular phenomena here. But the guy who prayed is really innocent. Innocence is limited imagination.”

“True,” I said. “Children are innocent precisely because their imagination is limited to the here and now. They don’t worry about the future, about what others think, or even about their own impishness.”

He liked that last part. “Let me absorb that,” he said. “The loss of the delusion that you like yourself is the real end of innocence, right?”

I couldn’t have put it better. I raised a toast to my friend’s wisdom. “I lost my innocence as a little child,” I said as I raised the glass merrily to my lips.

“Hmm,” he made a grimace. “And you lost your virginity in the library. Cheers.”