WHO KEEPS A VIGIL OVER THE SUN, THE WIND AND THE LAKES?






Pic.: Pushpa Mistry Kamath

I say this too often. And, yesterday, I heard it from a friend of mine, too: “We need to have trust when we step out into the world.”

Yes, this friend of mine, too, was asking, “What kind of life it would be, if we have no trust in each other?”

He pointed to me at the cars and the bikes parked inside our society complex and said, “Ours is a private society. We have this boundary wall and massive gates protecting us. There are these security guards keeping a vigil all through the day and the night… So, we think we are safe, our properties are safe. But, let’s just move out of our society complex and see how it is… There are these ultra-modern buildings with no place to park even their high-end cars… They leave them on the open road and go off to sleep. Lakhs and lakhs of taxis and auto rickshaws are left on the roadside by their owners when they go home at night… The lamps on the streets are not guarded… There are lakes giving us all the drinking water… They are so vast and so open… Every building has a water-tank… Who guards them twenty-four/seven? The Sun, the Moon, the Stars and the wind do their duty silently and we just trust them. The unknown people who cook and serve food for us in restaurants and everywhere else, the unknown people who drive us by their vehicles… The doctors, teachers, banks, the vendors and every kind of people around us… Oh yes, we do trust them when we step out of our houses. Else, how will the world run?”


This was what my friend telling me yesterday. Yes, it was about the trust which was so fundamental for our confident living. Imagine this mindset: Somebody is there out to grab me, loot me, cheat me… conspiring against me… If this is the mindset with which we step out of our houses, then, it is difficult to live life confidently…

We trust the Sun, the moon, the Stars and the wind who sustain our lives… We trust ‘the One’ Who guards our cars left on the streets… We trust the ‘One’ Who keeps a vigil over the lakes and the tanks which give us our drinking water…

Then, why is this fear, this suspicion… when I meet my fellow-being on the street?


GERALD D’CUNHA

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