There is no enemy!

 

In the movie Matrix, when its principal character Neo realizes the real nature of the matrix and accepts the truth about himself, he says to himself “there is no enemy” while carrying on a fist fight with Agent Smith. So also while thwarting away multiple personal boundary violations, I say with a smile, “there is no enemy.”

I can just hear you ask me despairingly “What the hell! Are you telling me that punk who cursed at me and is trying to stab me in the back is not my enemy??” I am repeating it again, “there is no enemy.” What is bringing forth this kind of foolish idealism may be your next query?

Well, most of us believe in God. I can start the explanation only with the base of spirituality, sorry. One core assumption in most religions is that this universe is replete with the presence of the One. Also that man is at his essence one with God. Accepting that as the fundamental truth, I have arrived at my aforementioned conclusion.

If everyone is one with God at his essence, then that must be our true abiding nature.  Therefore all are good. Yes, I also make that other vital assumption that God is good. At any moment, a human being is just a cluster of body, thoughts and feelings plus as we earlier presumed, the spirit of God. Now we all feel that we have an abiding “I-ness.” Whether at age 5 or age 50, I feel that I am me. Hope that is true for all of you. Since this I-ness is a constant, it must arise from something that is a constant as well. We know that the body we have now is not the one we had at birth. Also the thought we have at one moment is not the one in the next moment. Feelings are the impact of thoughts on body i.e. physical sensations. With the ever-changing nature of body and thought established, we have no doubt about the fleeting nature of feelings. So that brings us to the conclusion that our I-ness arises from the spirit of God because that is all that is left, right?

So here I go with some more crazy thinking: I am me because I am in essence one with God. This also holds good for you. Therefore, we are all good and share the same essence. This is our real nature. However we know that our behaviour really sucks at times. But this behaviour is just an external manifestation of thoughts and feelings. We have already concluded that thoughts and feelings are just fleeting phenomena. Therefore all our stupidity is just a passing cloud. In essence, we are all good – you, I, the whole truckload of people out there. Ergo, we are sharing one essence, full of goodness, and therefore there is no enemy. Only behaviour that really doesn’t work and that is okay because it passes. So again, I repeat, there is no enemy. Yes, I said it again. Please feel free to hit me with the nasty comments.

The Fertile Soil

The soil eagerly prayed,
For the seed to be laid.
She had long been in turmoil,
With her many days of toil.
Though she was ploughed through,
Not a single sapling grew,
Only ugly worms burrowed through.

The soil yearned for his presence.
After a thousand years of penance,
There was yet no sign of grace,
Her heart was an empty space.
Into this void would he enter,
To be lodged in her heart's center?
An answer only he could render!

Suddenly the heavens burst forth,
With mighty thunder and froth.
Rain splattered heavily,
Lightning stuck her steadily.
As rocks were crushed into pieces,
Water splayed through her crevices,
She bore his caresses and teases.

Into this moment of creation,
Surrendering with renewed passion,
She unfurled her wily curls,
Going back and forth in twirls.
Heaven and earth were one,
And she had finally won
A fair place under the sun.

Missing the trees for the forest

It is unfortunate that some elements of the media want to peddle the view of the Indian Muslim community as a homogeneous entity flirting with terrorism, steeped in fundamentalism, struggling with a perpetual victimhood complex, and eager for handouts. The truth is that there are all colours of Muslims from the very pious to the agnostic to the atheistic and even within these divisions there are so many shades in between that defy definition. The most religious Muslim necessarily need not be the one flaunting a skull cap or a Burqa. There are quieter modes of devotion and every spiritual Muslim does not wear his heart on his sleeve. Such subtleties are entirely lost when we constantly create group identities and cease to see the individual.

Now, I have very little knowledge about the post-Partition mentality of North Indian Muslims but hailing from Kerala and that too from a middle-class milieu and dedicated to Allah, I have usually found a number of both the older and younger generation of Malayali Muslims to be unburdened by a negative Muslim identity (at least the ones I have seen in my life). The idea of “Indian Muslim” as a separate entity at odds with mainstream India is a bogey that only rises with the occasional advent of religious riots or terrorism. If a woman can at once be a mother and a wife, I don’t see why a devout Muslim can also not be a patriotic Indian.  Thus as far as the many Malayali Muslims that I know are concerned, being simultaneously Indian, Malayali and Muslim without any of these identities usurping the importance of the other is their natural state irrespective of whether they are clean shaven and shorts-clad or bearded and lungi-clad.

The progressive flaunting of religious symbols among Muslims is a phenomenon that is world-wide and I feel it to be quite independent of the state of affairs in India. Whether sporting ¾-pants would make a Muslim more worthy in God’s eyes and thus more spiritual/religious is another idea for another day that has to be debated within the Muslim community.