Does God Exist? – Exodus 20:2

(a seven part article)

Part – I: Does God Exist?

Beep beep…. Beep beep…. Beep beep…. The gateways to my eyes barely opened, and my right hand stretched out in quite a ritualistic and practiced manner, without even holding it, touched the ‘ten-minute’ snooze option on the touch-screen of my blackberry. Ah these ten-minutes… they are the best six hundred seconds of my sleep. I snuggle back into the quilt, warm and cozy as another hand from the far corner of the bed stretches out and envelopes me into its safe ensconce. My mind seesawed between the comfort of a good sleep and the joy of a faint snooze, for, I don’t know how long, but it did seem like a really long time. Many things happened during that one sixth of an hour. It’s all so fuzzy…

Beep beep… Beep beep… Beep beep… it went off again, and this time around there was nothing I could do. This time it had gone well past beyond both, my desire and my control. I had to yield. Being an army brat, yielding to the temptation of a disciplined life is a routine, just a normal part of life rituals. Waking up on time is just one of the many such things, first among the many temptations that I yield to. A disciplined set-time start to a day, everyday. Yielding, just like I do everyday as a beautiful tribal ritual. Yielding, just like the many temptations in life that I have given into, every waking moment of my life and every sleeping second of my sleep. Always the same set of excuses, it has gone beyond me, both, beyond my desire and beyond my control.

It is a good discipline to yield to the wake up call every time the conscience in you sets the alarm off, and honor the clock of morality inside you. But do I do it always? Not really, because ‘discipline’ and ‘yielding’ don’t always really  go together, not from my perspective. I think they are counterintuitive; it can only be one or the other, but never both. So I don’t really always yield or in other words always honor, rather, I do it only when it pleases me or works to my advantage. There are so many times I have given in to the many temptations of life, the many wrongs that have knocked at my doors as disciplined invitations and attractive enticements. Bribes and baits lurking at those fantastic corners of life, drawing the six senses of my physical body away from the safe ensconcing grip of its spirit. What have I not been, a deceiver, at times a fornicator, other times an idolater, covetous, a drunkard, reviler, extortionist who has walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excesses such as revelings, banquetings and abominable idolatries. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak, for much as I wish to do or to not do something, the frailties of this ‘human’ body often make it impossible. Sometimes it’s the inability to say no to a friend, sometimes it’s the desire to just check it out, another times it’s the rules of the game and at times it’s the work place policy or even procedures in the school. There is always a good reason, logical all the time. Every organ system of the body has consistently and disciplinedly contributed to this yielding of mine… haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, heart that devises wicked plans, feet that hurry to run to evil, lying witness who testifies falsely, and a sower of discord in a family. Every vice, every wickedness that the clock of morality in me alerted me to time and again, and yet I ignore that clock, time and again. An excusable personal-policy-driven discipline that I have inculcated as a habit, all my life, and in the process giving into the wrongs of the world and thereafter every time blaming it onto something or someone. In any case, this was one ‘time’ again; I yielded, to the ten-minute snooze of my blackberry. But this one, I am so happy to!

But then who defined vices as vices and wickedness as wickedness? The Human me, or the God he? Or the laws of the land? But then ‘I’ wrote the laws of the land. Somewhere deep in the subconscious mind each one of us know the right and wrong and each one of us has been given the wisdom to choose the right over the wrong. And yet we choose the wrong over the right, why? Isn’t the same wisdom responsible for ‘us’ making those choices? Or is it the creator who so methodically and meticulously made me, also made those flaws or call them allowances, for me to go out and be fruitful? If so then is a wrong, really wrong?

With the beep beeps still ringing in my ears and the many thoughts ringing in my mind, the entrance to my eyes unlocked slowly but fully with the second round of alarm beeps. The gates flung open endorsing my mind to step out into another dawn, dawn of life, red-carpeting the path with a thin-film of an early morning tear, almost a drop in the making. A tear of sheer joy; joy of being so full of life; life to claim being alive for another day; day that presents just one new chance; chance perhaps to try ‘it’ out once again; again this time to make the right choice of a moral living; living it sincerely and this time living it better; better in my many unsuccessful yet determined attempts; attempts to answer a four decades old question; question: “Does God exist?”

By the way, they call me ‘Human’, that is my name. Here on. Interesting, they say that God, if he does exist, decided in his book, called the Book of ‘Genesis’: “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness; so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the earth.” Have always wondered, if he created us in his own image then why did he call us ‘Human’ and called himself ‘God’? Just as I ask that question, the unyielding disciplinarian inside me yells to me, it is time to get up, another day, and another attempt to answer the four decades old question, “Does God exist?”

Part II – I died

It is Saturday morning and the time was ten past ten. I dragged my body off the bed and my feet lagged behind on the ground drawn into the kitchen. I slammed the door to the microwave, with a bowl of lentil soup with some meat stew turning it on, for ten minutes to heat up. Only ten minutes because out of some bitter experience, I have known, that so perfect eleventh minute very liberally allows rather gravitates… or should I say anti-gravitates, the soup to successfully bubble over the edges down the walls of the bowl onto the expansive microwave floor. No mistaking this time that eleventh minute. Well everyone makes mistakes and we learn from them and have I. I have made mistakes while cooking too, cooking my life out of nothingness since I was born or rather created as a man, all through the course of my evolution for those who are Darwinism believers and evolutionists. After all we are all believers, some in God and some in Darwin. In any case, in my efforts to: make myself fittest and therefore survive, present myself warm, with the right mix of flavors and ensure that I am acceptable to the tastes of some or perhaps to the tastes of all around me, the family, village, society, country and the law, I have continually made mistakes, learned from them and have continued to evolve. So will I make that mistake again? No, not this time, this time it will be ten minutes only, just enough to get the right warmth and flavor to my soup and stew. And the hum of the microwave trailed off as my ears were led away from that sound carried on their feet.

I walked into the bath to cleanse myself, another ritualistic act that constituted a start of every day, another day, a new day. This was an unusually early start for a Saturday I must say, and I decided to let my body splurge some of its time in the luxury of the Jacuzzi. The wetness tingled my skin momentarily before the warm water started to massage my deeper tissues. Aah, the thick streams of hot water slamming against my muscles, so very rejuvenating, so very relaxing. It is like feeding into me a new energy, in fact a new body over the one that has got worn out after a week-long of toil. Just as they say, being reborn, in a new spirit, the anointed one. As the foam started building up, my mind circled back. Circled back to the past nearly two decades of my life, of my many accomplishments and successes. My chest puffed up, not to the warmth of the heat or soaking of the water but to the pride of my achievements. Academics, profession, personal life, finances, marriage, talents, family, network, material richness’s, fame… name it and I got it. I therefore, had every reason to feel proud about and my chest had every reason to be puffed up in pride, with arrogance and an air of cockiness. Here I was, indulging in the ritualistic act of cleansing my body but the spirit was so deeply engrossed in its own selfish, arrogant boastful celebrations of its own accomplishments, accomplishments of material and earthly nature. As the images of my many masqueraded Nobels and Oscars paraded in front of my closed eyes, on the screen of the inside of my lids, the human in me looked more like a God to me. And then the human in me… at this moment, the God in me rested. Hours passed… or so I thought.

I was drowning, or it felt like so, not able to breathe and feeling drenched all over my body, at least the part that I think was exposed in its stark nakedness… Yes, I am certain, I was drowning. In that moment of near-death, my life started to reel in front of my eyes. A feeling of deep guilt and utter shame shrouded me that very moment, shame of being naked, in many ways and the guilt emanating from a beating contrite heart. Guilt for what the devil in me had done and for what the human being in me had not done that he should have. Ironically the God in me had consistently taken prideful and authoritative responsibility for many things in life, as well as accepted standing credible acknowledgement for all the on-goings and happenings of my past and present, besides, also very cleverly justified every bad and wrong doing as well as prided in every good. However, in this moment of near-death guilt as I was drowning, my arrogance, the cockiness around me and the God within me, were slowly but reluctantly melting away giving way to a desperate begging for forgiveness, searching for a hand of help with a massive collapse of the God inside me. It felt like I was in deep, cold waters just deep enough to suffocate me yet with a silver lining of hope, hope that I was close enough to the surface, close enough, that one nod of willingness from my side, permitting ‘life’ in its efforts to struggle and save my face up through the surface, will indeed pull me out of this bad dream. One nod, just one nod, that would in fact be ‘my’ catholic confession, my first and most sincere desire for atonement. It occurred to me like I was in a loop, like those many futile attempts of sanity and purity during my youthful days of life, attempting to extricate me out of my own nature, nature of sin and of drudgery and digging me out of a life full of corruption and selfishness. A perfectly symmetrical loop of, a sincere attempt to atone followed by a magnificent failure articulated by my own hands leading into another gloriously treacherous two-faced life of deceit, betrayal, moral lawlessness hidden from my other half and from rest of the world. That’s the perfect Human I have evolved into as Darwin described after having been created so beautifully in his own image by the God.

I was definitely drowning, not because it felt like so, but because at this time, death appeared to be a sweeter alternative than living this perfectly symmetrical loop of life. Yes, I am certain, I was drowning. In that moment of near-death, I kneeled down in my mind, not for forgiveness but more likely begging answer to the question, that makes more desperate meaning now than ever before, “Does God exist?”

And then it rang… think it sounded like the sound of an alarm, or was it not. My mind may later make some right connections and configure out what that so very distant, distinct yet familiar sound was? For now, it was another alarm, another alert warning. I was drowning and likely about to die. My last breath.

Part III – A second chance

Beep beep…. Beep beep… I woke up, totally shaken, it was my sweat that had gotten my pillows and quilt drenched overnight and in a meaningful poetic revenge that they were taking, I was now drowning in the drench, of my own making. Drowning in my own mistakes, of the volume of my ignominious past that has been dotted with my goods and bads; drowning in the gallons of my deceitful shame mixed and shaken with a few momentary niceties and acts of kindnesses; and drowning my overflowing sullied, corrupted life that had flashes of worthiness at times and few half to quarter rainbows of romances with the same life. Having woken up, it still felt like I was fighting the strong waves of my thoughts that continued to drag my feet into the depths. I knew I have managed to stay afloat. Another successful save, giving me, the human in me, another opportunity to walk the continual walk of evolution and please my creator for laying that so very perfect stone of foundation in me when he breathed life into my nostrils. I woke up, shaken but alive. Afraid but so very assuredly happy, that I was alive.

It was still dark, or so it appeared. Dark despite the time of the day, think it was late. Well it was dark, because the cover of the window curtains protected me, and my nakedness, from being visible to the outside world. How sweet, how astutely sneaky? Trying to look around in that very little light, my pupils dilated, and all I could see was everything drenched around me. Was I really feeling wetness all around me? Think I was seeing wetness, rather than feeling or perhaps, I couldn’t see anything and my eyes were just reading what my clever and crafty mind was influencing them to believe, believe what is right that may not necessarily be right and persuading me to make the same mistakes all over again, the Satan within me, my mind. Soon my eyes renewed their vision with the dawn of more light, striking the walls of my retina as the apertures to them opened up just like windows flung open to allow for the sunlight to walk in. This was my moment of enlightenment, moment that throws one into the throes of guilt, of self-criticism, of ashamed indignation for one’s life and shameful rejection of oneself, that I so often am made to bask in, sometimes self-righteously but mostly contemptuously. The poetic contrast between darkness and light, between death and life, between wrong and right, between body and spirit can never be separated and captured in two different air-sealed bottles like the genie of Aladdin. They will remain sides of the same coin, always together, back-to-back, not facing each other yet destined to live together. Like two heavy weights on a seesaw fighting to down-weigh each other in their desire to climb higher, reach higher and stay higher but only to keep seesawing on either side of the fulcrum, in various combinations of one over the other and each time with a magnificent justification from the laws of the physics that combines, gravity, kinetic energy and potential energy around a pivot. Avery pivotal description to the human life.

Few more moments of agonizing search by my widely awake eyes now convinced me that I just woke up from sleep, had shaken off a bad dream. That sound of what sounded like an alarm now felt like music to my ears. It was just a dream. Breathing heavy, still sweating profusely I gathered all of myself both body and spirit, filled them with the many pieces of my mind fragmented by my thoughts and could now feel so complete. Complete but not full yet. As I took in that first fresh breath slowly bringing my head out from under the cover of the quilt, it was like a life-giving breath being infused into my nostrils, being given a new life again. How assuring and how comforting; like having been given another chance at life, a second chance perhaps.

In the next few seconds of my life, both the little light that was penetrating through the slit of the curtains and my adequately dilated and accommodating eyes together gave me sufficient vision, to sit up and look around. Picking up my blackberry, I noticed that the time was ten past ten on a Saturday.

Part IV – A wake up call

I continued to plead for more air, but in the bargain, was gulping only more of water. I was now getting more desperate to survive. The fittest and finest parts of my body tried to assembled together once more to keep all of me as one, one complete living soul. My mind trying to think of every conceivable idea of pulling my head up, my hands flailing wildly struggling to get a grip of whatever they could hold onto, my legs in their desperate attempt to swim and my eyes teary eyed, looking thro the thick prism of water all around, for a savior. All the best parts of me in their most desperate efficiency came together. Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ indeed was driven by a scientific observation and as a demonstration of the same, the survival of me, Human species, was depended on ‘that’ very science today. My hunger for more and more of oxygen became apparent as my lungs turned into a powerful vacuum machine that would suck in anything and everything that is offered to them. It was like a lost battle, almost lost, when suddenly something happened.

In the throes of my desperation and agony of impending death, suddenly I could hear as the time stood still, it was as if the desperation was all over, the flailing was all over, the fighting to survive had ended, and may be the devil hugged me into its bosom. I died. In that moment of death, a sense of calmness prevailed upon me, of reassuring comfort. Not really, my head just about bobbed out of the waters onto the surface, a shriek of joy escaped my lips not loud enough, yet enough to display the thrill of accomplishment. An excitement of being alive overwhelmed me as my head just about bobbed out of the waters onto the surface and I felt the strong grip of a heavy hand on my arm plunging, lunging and pulling me out, saving me. Gasping for air, with lungs working hard, I offered my little prayer of thanks giving, as I tried to cling on to life again, for this moment, for another moment. I was alive. Another chance at life, a second chance perhaps.

Beep beep… Beep beep…, In that excitement of being alive and in the calmness of the moment, just at that very moment, I heard a distant cry of an alarm. Again my mind started to make some connections, trying to figure out what was it and where was it coming from. It almost felt like a microwave timer going off. Microwave timer? Of course Microwave timer… didn’t I turn it on ten minutes back? It was the yelp from the microwave. The bowl of soup I had kept in there, to heat up, must be ready. I then realized, I had dozed off in the stillness of the waters, in the warmth of the Jacuzzi that I just got into few minutes back. The ten minutes of that sleep seemed like a nightmare of many hours. Not able to figure out what that hand was that pulled me out of the waters, I guessed that the microwave had been alerting for a while now… with the alarm going off again and again, almost like yelling to me, “wake up”.

“Wake up from your shameful slumber you, O’ unworthy creation of God. How long will you continue to sleep in the comforting bed of your personal success, warmth of your individual magnificence, pride of your professional accomplishments, grandeur of your intellectual brilliance, glowing shadows of your talents and fame, and happiness of your personal family? How long will you live a selfish life for personal glory? And worse, how long will you keep complaining for what you do not have? Praying for more money, dreaming of more comforts, thirsting for more luxuries, pleading for more benefits, grumpy at have-nots and angry about unfilled wishes? How long? Time to wake up, look around you. Open the eyes of your mind and look around, are your have-nots more desperate than the haves around? Look around and see the pains, the pangs, the hungers, the guns, the poverty, the homelessness, the terror, the inequality, the tragedies, the refugees, the thirst, the killings, the anarchy, the wails, the animosities, the borders, the racisms, the wars, the complaints, the hatred, the selfishness, the politics, the conflicts, the anger, the intolerance and the denials and betrayals. Do your pains and asks seem to be any which way justified? Shame on you.” This was a wake-up call.

I could hear God, or was it my own self-righteous voice once again?

“This was not what I created you for, in my image.”

The moment of human awakening, as I woke up from my deep shameful slumber.

The microwave timer was still beeping loud, continuing to plead my attention.

Part V – Life – A game of Chess, not a game of dice

As I lay buried in my now totally soaked bed, comforting and cheering in the thought that I was alive, just sweating to a bad dream, which is now over, my mind attempted to connect some dots. It struggled hard to make that connection between the three sounds, one that is the alarm of my blackberry, the other the beep beep of my microwave and the third that I think I have a vague yet assuring familiar memory of. Beep beep… Beep beep… Was it the ring of a chess timer? Oh yes indeed… that, was the sound, that was it, a musical ring of the chess clock that I had been so addicted to, in the youth of my life. So someone somewhere was playing this game, playing it in my dreams. Am I one of the players? Who am I playing against? Or is someone else playing for me? Who is it? Ah, Chess, I so loved to play this game, just as much as I so love to live life. The two are so much the same, the game of chess and the human life, playing and living. Chess, mans greatest invention and; Human life, Gods greatest creation. Seems like a perpetual tussle between God vs. man. But wasn’t it supposedly God vs. devil? No, I surely am not the devil?

Chess, a game of war on the battleground of which you have human-like characters deliberating, strategizing and conspiring hard, to make the right moves at the right times with the sole purpose of winning. One calls them ‘tactics’, that are schemes, maneuvers and plots that may have an immediate acute impact but are more likely small foundations for a future big move, a conniving move. A zero-sum game where there is one winner and one loser, just as in life it is a cutthroat battle where every win that one celebrates is at the cost of a loss that someone else suffers. The game pieces have as many varieties and as many different moves as the human beings have in their relationships with each other. We have an immediate family, paternal maternal sides, cousins and second cousins, distant loved ones, neighborhood and community, village and town, state and country, foreigners, expats, immigrants and refugees (which interestingly and actually, all mean the same) and lastly aliens, wow… that’s exactly the same number of pieces on the chess board, sixteen! Incredibly close, I say. ‘Game’ that is the outcome of thousands of years of creation, refining, science, testing and tinkering and ‘Human’ that is an outcome of millions of years of evolution which is the one word for creation, refining, science, testing and tinkering. The universe is a huge frame on which God created his greatest masterpiece and the chess board is that small micro-frame where man the greatest player created his masterpiece, a fantastic work of science and art, some call it a painting, that is craftily enjoyed by generations of the human species. Now I know, why there have been times when I have felt like “I am God”.

“God doesn’t play dice with the universe”, said Albert Einstein and it is so true about Gods dealing with life too. He surely doesn’t play dice with humans. And therefore the randomness of a dice game would not define life, rather the probabilities behind the many permutations and combinations, just like what a chess game offers is what defines human life. It is full of options and opportunities, which my church pastor would call as ‘the freewill of God’. Hmmm… probabilities and statistics, which are presented on an 8×8 chessboard with 204 squares almost, well almost, as many as the bones in a human, so nicely define and describe the many opportunities that present to the players of the game. They have that freewill to choose their moves, choose their pawns and at their own sweet time, time that is watched by the chess clock. Behold, when someone stands at the door, and knocks, any man who hears that voice, has the freewill to open the door, allowing the stranger to come in. One can choose not to, but can also choose, to. God surely doesn’t play dice with the universe or the humans… quite likely he plays chess.

A game that so beautifully mirrors life, that is rich in metaphors for human existence. Winning on this battle ground requires killing the opponent’s king or dying for your own king, eventually, to only leave the chess board naked and empty bereft of life and ready for the next game, the next pitched battle, the next round of killings. How interesting, isn’t this all life about? A non-violent killing every moment, every day, deep in our hearts and minds? To die for or to kill for, one battle after the other, one victory after another, one loss follows another… or rather worse, ones victory over another’s loss, ones rejoicings over another’s pains, one’s celebrations over another’s mourning’s. Isn’t this life all about, of conspiring, back-biting, politicking with the selfish goal of being better, richer, grander, whiter, larger, sexier and… well off, only to eventually die or be killed, leaving the board empty and naked only for another life to start, another game to begin. A game and a life, in which one treats every other fellow being with distrust, disdain, hatred, and disgust through the prism of personal opinions, past subjective experiences and multitudes of prejudices and misunderstandings’. Interesting that in life and in our human relationships, the threat of an action, drives the relationship in a direction that one wants to. Just like in the game of chess, the threat of an action would gently yet temptingly nudge the opponent in a direction that you would like him to. Would you really carry out that threat? May be not, because that was just a threat, an emotional blackmail that humans so well indulge in. The queen, yes the Queen is the most powerful piece in the game as against the King who is the slowest and the weakest yet the fight continues till the King dies, long after the Queen is gone, just as in the life of a man, it is the woman in his life that carries all the drama, flash and fantasy that bedazzles the man but then unfortunately or fortunately or incidentally it is largely the male kingship that defines and decides everything in life. Not good but the reality, just like God first created man and then created woman out of his rib to be his partner and company.

Last but the most interesting and critical is that just as in the game of chess with the millions of options, to be precise about, 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000, The Shannon number, about ten to the power of one hundred and twenty moves, despite that, the hardest thing is the opening game, just as it is in approaching the woman of your dreams, the opening move. With all these myriads of thoughts going on in my mind, I am again distracted, with the sound of the alarm. Again? Yet again and, Yes, I guess I overslept or may be it was that ten minutes snooze. Clearly, there is a game of chess going on, somewhere that is deliberately and calculatedly enticing me. Clearly, the next move was made and the chess clock was struck again. Wondering who is playing, wondering if I am part of the game, surely I am alive and therefore am part of Life.

Part VI – The Judgement Day

And as the dots connected in my mind, just about made clear, between the sound that I assumed I heard and the sound that I think I am familiar with, that include the blackberry alarm, the microwave beep and the chess clock buzz, I was lying on my bed, well believing a game of chess going on somewhere near. My eyes fought hard to open wide, and now struggled to see in the canvas-like backdrop of bright white-light, a distinctly outlined white silhouette, apparently in a white robe, at a distance, sitting on a couch, a black couch. Head tilted forward onto what looked like a small coffee table. That’s all I could see…, that’s all I could see now, with the eyes drowsy and mind just woken up… or perhaps the other way mind drowsy and eyes just woken up. As my eyes made their next attempt to adjust to the brightness of the light shone, they tried to constrict its pupillary gateways now. It felt like a game of see-saw, the sudden dilatation earlier and now an anarchic attempt to constrict. A see-saw of life’s up and downs, of rights and wrongs, of open and closed doors, of joys and pains, of cries and celebrations, of smiles and frowns, of friends and foes, of capital letters and small letters, of black and white, of God and Devil. By now my pupils had constricted and gateways narrowed, enough for me to see, an elderly male, dressed in a white robe sitting on a black couch, staring onto a board-game with hands held together, fingers in a lock perhaps trying to unlock his mind to make the next move, struggling hard to decide, to decide the right from the wrong and choose, choose the right over the wrong. Yes indeed, he was playing the game of life, a game of chess. And right next to the board I did notice that faintly visible chess clock, or was it the clock of life. It all made sense now, that sound that woke me up off deep sleep, soaked in my own sweat, was the sound of this clock of life. Did I really wake up or was this my eternal sleep that I have now woken up into – my After-life? I missed another chance at life, a second chance. I died.

I stood there motionless, like frozen in a vacuum. First it was just me and then slowly as my eyes could see better and see more, as life after death dawned on me, there were more like me, many many more. A hundred or thousand I guess, all standing next to each other back to chest and chest to chest, shoulder-to-shoulder with barely any breathing space, space that became more and more scarce. It was hot, it was humid, it was scary, and a stale smell of sweat with a nauseating stench of the unknown seemed to fog into the scarce space around me, around us. None was moving, like we were stunned into motionlessness by the sounds of the alarm, each ring indicating one move, a move that decides our, my next step, a move that adds one more to this multitude of crowd. The increasingly nauseating stench now started suffocating me. The stench of my own deeds, our deeds, deeds that were not meant to be, not what God really meant us to do. Every one of us bit that forbidden apple, every one of us betrayed those stone tablets that Moses lifted high on the Mount Sinai, every one of us as wretched as wretchedness could be, every one of us as corrupt and criminal as the devil would rule upon us to be, every one of us broke that promise that Abraham made to his God. Not one, not one of us lived in the image of God that we were created in. It all flashed in front of my eyes, like a vulgar display of ones real life, the hidden one. It occurred to me that my life was all like I was fighting God all the time, all my life, doing everything that I was not supposed to, everything that God would not want me to.

I took a deep breath still attempting to gulp as much air as I could perhaps suddenly remembering that I may be still drowning, drowning in the sweat soaked bed, gasping for air and drowning in the surface-deep waters of my Jacuzzi. Gulping more of the less air and with that deep reinvigorating breath of life, I glanced around me. It seemed like a resonant ceiling all around us encompassing us all… hundreds of us… oh no, thousands or may be say a millions of us and ever-increasing. I climbed onto my toes to see better, to be taller than I really am. This is what I have always done, tried to be what I really am not. Appear taller than what I am, better than what I am, richer than what I am and the list goes endless.

There were so many of us lined up for miles and miles and miles and then I just couldn’t see, try however hard I would. And then suddenly it started happening, right in front of me… I could see some with skin peeling off, with ears falling off, with eyes popping out, the decomposition had set in, the stench was only worsening. I could hear loud groans with frothing from the mouth. My ears felt perforated with the loud cacophony of cries, wails and a scary buzz that increased in intensity as bodies started falling apart right in front of me. I stood still in the vacuum as if moving my body will collapse it down into zillions of fragments and puffing my dust into thin air. And then I saw something else happening, some bodies just ascending up in the air leaving all their clothes behind, as if leaving all their earthly possessions behind, as if leaving their body behind and carrying their spirit, as if leaving all their bad self behind and climbing up for a second chance. At the end all that remained were the bones, the ashes and me. Me, still standing still in the same vacuum. I was alone, afraid, proud, confused, cold and sweating.

Now it was just him and me, no one between us. I could now make out his face more clearly… an old man with bald head and the prophet like look on his face, largely covered by a thick nest of an Arab beard. He was clearly very absorbed in his game however, and interestingly, that couch opposite to him, the white one, was unoccupied, all I could make out was a black cloak stretched across covering a third of the that couch. It was almost as if he was playing the game of chess with an invisible opponent who had a black cloak on, part of which stretched across the white couch on which he must have been sitting.

Part VII – Yes, God Exists

I tried to walk closer, as I heard:

“Ah, there you are Son! Well, you made it.” An assuring glee in that tone that comforted me off the stench around.

I turned to face him. He wasn’t looking at me. It was as if I never existed there.

To be continued…