Even numbers have meanings. They have meanings that are. They have
meanings that were never meant to be. The Real confused with the illusion. The
illusion becoming the Real. In some languages, 4 is a bad number. It means
death.
Death is
an inescapable reality.
An end
to all madness and tyranny.
A way
home,
so how can it be bad?
In other cultures, 4 is in demand.. It denotes “get” or “achieve”.
‘Achieving’ and ‘getting’ takes up a major part of human life. It is about
collecting as many toys as you can. The toys that will inevitably bore you and
decay. The toys that will outlive your very existence on earth. It is also about getting and achieving
candies. They are very sweet to the ear and very sweet to the heart. Titles.
Glamour. Prestige. Your Excellency! Honour!
Pray
tell me sir, why honour me when I destroy God’s earth in the name of
civilization?
And did
you not bestow me with titles when I ensured poor people have no access to food
and homes by raising the price of land?
A cynical thought penetrates Santim’s mind. The number most liked are those that denote
money. Thousands. Millions. Billions. Humans are born with accurate judgement
skills. We grow up undoing those skills. Our judgemental ability becomes
blurred. Nay, made to be blurred by the system. We measure humans by numbers.
The richer you are, the greater respect they give you. They also inwardly envy
you. You are a man of society. You are uno numero.
And ah
yes, the injustice I demonstrated in the name of my profession.
You
called me a genius!
It does not matter how much you have plundered the life of others to
enrich your own. People have short memories. They cannot see what you do. Only
what you have.
Truth to many people is what they see,
Sometimes they are blind
Often times they blindfold their eyes
They wish to see only what is outside of them.
That is why they cannot see the transience of
their breath
for it is within them.
Statistics - numbers of the learned and of the powers that be.
Delilah Al-Karim was a 12 year old girl. She grew up in her home on a land
which no State recognized. She was a sweet, pony-tailed girl who only wanted to
grow up to be the best daughter of her parents and the best sister of her two
elder brothers. That was her only
innocent, childhood dream. Like your sister and mine, like your daughter and
mine, she was full of life inspired by the presence of her family’s love. One day her bubble burst when they were having
dinner in her home.
There was a loud explosion. Airplanes and tanks of adults playing
war games against each other. This time for real. In the interest of some lofty
adult ideals which Delilah could never understand. She was unfortunate to wake
up alive in the rubble of what was once her home with her mother’s severed hand
on her stomach. She could not cry any tears when she thought she saw the
butchered meat of who were once her father, mother and two brothers.
Santim recalls that she told him she heard the radio the following
day: “It was a victorious day for our troops. Our casualty was 12 and the
enemies were 240”. Twenty years later,
struggling to understand, she could never find the answer to what happened.
Uncle Sam[1]
calls it collateral damage.
Others call it unavoidable war casualties.
To Delilah, they will always be her father, mother
and brothers whose love has been cruelly snatched away from her.
Santim Raj knows too well that when humans are reduced to
statistics, the Devil is in charge. Statistics have no life or form. They are
numbers. They are files or profiles. They do not matter. They are dispensable.
The death of 20 people in a population of 20 million can be explained away as
‘statistically minimal’. These are
sleeping pills to make us sleep better.
When your
only loved one dies,
he or she
is 100 per cent of what you had.
As you
had ONLY cared for yourself,
When it’s
your turn, your loved ones too will only be a statistic to them.
Santim recalls that the Master once told him, “Many worship the
Devil though numbers”. I was then too young to understand. How could numbers be
an object of worship?
When something consumes your life,
It is that, that you worship
Not the rituals that you
Innovate to deceive yourself of your
religiousness.
People do not seek the Truth anymore but they seek numbers of
devotees. The greater the number of devotees, the more truthful the belief is
they say. A Truth of one is crushed by the millions of deceit, lies and
conjectures. Majority reigns arrogantly and oppresses the minority. The might
of numbers and not the Truth becomes a god.
Hence, the pathway to the Truth is but a
lonely path.
Truly life is a repetition. We repeat the errors of history. We
repeat the foolish ways of our forefathers. We honour and encourage
development, education and improvement to better our lives. At the same time,
we busy ourselves with weapons of mass destruction to destroy the very things
we have built over the years. We want peace, stability and prosperity for
ourselves but do not want the same for others. We think it is our birthright
that the blessings we now enjoy are ours alone.
Hungry children in Ethiopia
We have
bigger problems – which is the best hand phone model for our 12 year old
daughter?
The cruelties we unleash creatively shames even
the Devil.
Yet we insist that we are people of God, education
and civilization.
Santim wonders: has the world gone mad? He remembers the village he was born. He grew
up in a kampong[2]
which was surrounded by coconut trees and plants. Everywhere it was green. His
wooden house had only one stand fan. He
could step out of his house onto pure sand - mother Earth. There were no fences
with his neighbours, but they were not exactly next door like the expensive
link houses of today.
Santim remembers a friend he had who built his
paradise on earth. Santim shared in his happiness. This friend had told him his
paradise is for all. He has no attachments to anything of this world. One day,
Santim had, foolishly, asked him if he could bring some mortals who had wanted
to taste his paradise. He forbade.
How
could I share in your happiness, when you make it exclusive?
Are
you now, God?
