WHY DO 'BAD PEOPLE' LIVE LONGER?

I saw this FB message, this morning:

“Good news: People are living longer. Bad news: You can’t pick up which ones!”

Eashaan, a dear student of mine, had sent it to me.

“O boy!” I clicked on the ‘Like’ without even a second thought, “How did you read my mind?”

That means, I am not happy at all to watch ‘bad people’ now living longer… It is a ‘bad news’ to me…! Is that not so?

Have I been asking in my mind, all in frustration and bitterness: “Why does God allow the ‘bad people’ – my tormentors – to live long? Yes, why don’t all the nasty, cruel, harmful and destructive people in my life – in this world – die early?

I do not know if Eashaan is as ‘serious’ as I am…

I hope, he is…

For, all down the ages, the idea of ‘Good people’ and ‘Bad people’ had been a matter of our perception. The one who is ‘bad’ in my eyes is ‘good’ in his own… and, if there are a thousand people vouching for me, there are thousand doing the same for him.

Now, if God is to decide who should go first… then, it, certainly, is not my business to influence God’s judgment…

Who knows, there IS a probability that I may go before my tormentor does…

And, often, that happens!

That’s why, perhaps, the young like Eashaan, today, conclude: “You can’t pick up which ones!”

King Herod, in the Bible, was a heartless king… Just like ‘Kamsa’ in the Hindu Scriptures. But, just imagine this: Would the story of Jesus Christ be as holy and as inspiring as it is now… had Herod not been there around with all his cruelty? Ditto about Lord Krishna. Would the amazing Gopala legend be complete without the presence of heartless Kamsa?

Thank God, there was a Herod and there was a Kamsa…

Yes, thank God, there was a Hitler and there was Bin Laden...

And, thank God, for, He allowed them to live as long as He wished!

If Life is a play, the world is a stage and we all are actors playing our roles… then, every one here has been perfectly cast… Yes, he is where he is supposed to be!

My story needs me at the center-stage… the hero, the protagonist. But, how can my story be complete without rest of the players: the leading lady, the villain, the clown, the vamp… the guardian angels and the devil’s agents, the good souls and the bad souls… and, above all, the inevitable one: the writer, director and producer of the play?

Yes, I do wonder, like my student Eashaan, 

“Why don’t only ‘good people’ live longer?”

But then, I am only left to wonder…

And, that’ something so beautiful and so mysterious about living…

About this play called ‘Life’!

GERALD D’CUNHA

Pics.:Pic.: Anisha Jiandani