The Song

In my college days, I used to take the train from Bangalore to Calcutta to go spend time with my family during the hols. There was this beggar-man who I have seen at least three or four times on these trips. He used to get on the train somewhere near Bhubaneshwar and he used to sing for coins. Some of us used to give him money, and he used to get off the train a few stops later.

He was either blind or had the most mangled normal eyes that I've ever seen. He used to be on the arm of a little kid who led him through the crowded train. Whether the kid was his own, I don't know. The man always sang this one song. It was in Oriya. The romantic in me likes to think he came up with it himself, but it was probably lifted from some movie. Oriya is close enough to Bangla that I understood what he was saying. I can even put down the original words here, but I'm afraid that I'll mangle them rather badly.

Briefly, what he was saying is this.

Lord, you are cruel for having done this to me.
If you look inside my sad heart, you will see my pain.

He had a beautiful voice, and he sang this in a refrain. It wasn't boring. It was mesmerizing somehow; at least to me. And then afterwards, he finished the song with a few lines which said, essentially:

But Lord, you are good and merciful.
I know that you look over me and will look after me.
And for this, I love you and I worship you.

Sorry for the poor translation, but that is close enough.

Some things stay with you. That song has stayed with me because I was simultaneously haunted and puzzled by that song. To be precise, I was puzzled by the words. My then young mind couldn't grasp the meaning of that song. (And I still can't grasp the meaning; maybe someone can explain it.) Here was someone who had a crippling (and how!) disadvantage. And in his mind, he had identified his god as the cause of his condition. He said so in as many words. He lamented this fact, at length, in a song, and then basically concluded that his god is really, secretly, verily, a nice guy. So what if this god has quite plainly screwed him over for life? Mere detail.

And oh by the way, that song is not unique in its sentiment. As I have lived and learned, I have heard this same idea expressed in poetry, music, and literature. And I wonder. Are we the only animals that do this? Are we the only species that identifies something that is causing us pain and then proceed to love that cause. Isn't that the dictionary definition of masochism?

I don't think a single other kind of animal does this. Even the puniest animal does something, ANYTHING when faced with a vastly more powerful one. It kicks, scratches, it tries to bite back. It reacts somehow, someway. Even at the most passive, it cowers and whimpers in fear. What it DOES NOT DO is stand in the corner and sing praises of its tormentor.

But humans do this frequently. Why?

And don't you think that a god, if he were around, would be amused by this a little? I mean, if there indeed existed a god and we were indeed his charge, then I can almost see him sitting in a comfortable chair somewhere, munching on a big divine bowl of nachos, nudging his beer buddies and going: "Get a load of this guys. I kick them in the shins, I pull their wings off and then push them with my finger to see how far they'll crawl...and they gulp it all down and still call me in the morning. Man, these men are stupid! And to think that they think that the other animals I put on that planet are dumb!! What a hoot."

That is why I take a different tack of course. See, here's what I think. I think that in a universe created by a benevolent god (or even by a neutral but competent god), no one should be required to stumble barefoot through a dirty train singing to keep body and soul together. Something doesn't smell right here. So it follows naturally that if there is a single architect of this world, then that gentleman is either glaringly incompetent or an irredeemable rancid cunt. There is no third conclusion. So cussing him out is the thing to do, really. It is what every believer should do, nevermind us atheists. Maybe that way, the prick will be stung enough to pay attention. So don't spoil him with praise, people. That way you are making him the exact opposite of what you want him to be. Now doesn't that make a lot more sense than what the men in frocks have told you?

Think about it. And have a good and drunken Fourth of July.