THE WORLD OUTSIDE IS NOT A DANGEROUS PLACE











Many of us here, in Mumbai, got up from our sleep around 3 last night. For a very long time, we had never seen the kind of lightening we saw last night… It was incessant, blinding… Nor had we heard the kind of thunder we were pounded with, last night… It was deafening. It was pouring furiously… even the wind was merciless. I don’t remember getting up and checking my windows like this for a long, long time… My wife was fast asleep… I pulled the curtains and prayed in my heart, “God, have mercy on us!”

Some thirty minutes or so later, the turmoil came to an end… We all went off to sleep.

In the morning, when I described the incident to my wife, she was pleasantly surprised!

When Nature turns violent – like in Florida (Hurricane Irma), Corpus Christi (Hurricane Harvey) or in St. Martin Islands… man knows what a futile act his blame-game can be… Who will he complain to? Who will he accuse or sue? Who will he turn for help to?

However grave and sinister the Nature-sent calamity is, however ruined at the moment man seem to be… he learns to trust in the innate goodness of Life… He does say to himself, “This too shall pass”… “All will be well in the end.”

Man has survived monstrous floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, droughts, famines, wars and every crisis imaginable… Life has been kinder than death… Success has been more rampant than failures… Love has been more epidemic than hate… Good people have been inheriting this planet more than the bad ones… Heaven has been more aspired than hell… Happiness rules us for longer than despair…

This truth alone is enough to keep our faith in the goodness of life… It is trust that keeps our Mumbai trains on track each day and each night… Look at the way we commute during peak hours in a Mumbai-Virar local! It’s a miracle that we still choose to commute like that despite the danger and death that looms so large!

So many of our buildings, here, are in a dilapidated state… the electrical wires that we see are like death-traps… the water we drink comes from open dirty lakes… We only trust that all is taken care of… that, somebody protects us… a human or a super-human!

Little children have been going to schools for eons… Young girls have been moving out during nights for eons… Schools, colleges, hospitals, temples, activity classes, gurus, teachers, coaches, bosses, producers and directors, actors and actresses, business associates and competitors, politicians and their chelas, house-maids, bus drivers and conductors, taxi and rickshaw drivers, postmen, delivery boys, newspaper boys, milkmen, watchmen, sweepers and gardeners… come on, when has this planet been without them?


When we leave home every morning, we have an option… to leave home imagining the world to be a dangerous place or a safe place. Mercifully, most of us choose to imagine the world to be a safe place… We choose to leave our homes with trust and not with doubt, suspicion and fear…

That’s why, despite the occasional hurricanes and earthquakes, wars and terror-attacks, gang-rapes and cold-blooded murders, betrayals and untimely deaths, droughts and drug-addictions… yes, despite these occasional dark clouds on an otherwise bright sky… we all would like to believe, that this world is an amazing place… that God has been kind…

It is peaceful, outside… No blinding lightning… no deafening thunder… no furious rain… no merciless wind. Life is beautiful, even though it hangs under the constant shadow of death!



GERALD D’CUNHA


Pic.: Madan Manik

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