Where has the light gone?

Reading Advisory: All posts in this blog that are labeled as ‘Conversations with God’ are factual accounts of my dreams over the last few months. Dreams, as you know, have this ineffable ‘dream like’ quality and they cannot be blogged as such. So I have done a bit of spicing up to put them together in this blog. However every effort is taken to preserve the actual content and character of the conversation as it was privately revealed to me. I am not responsible for any ignorant bigotry that may arise out of stupidly accepting these dreams as reality.

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“What do you mean?” God asked.

“Well, whenever I point out the absurdity of this answer, people will go on and on about how shallow and hedonistic I am and how I should think beyond science to understand stuff like this” I said.

“Well Earthling, that’s not your fault. May be we should try answering one at a time…”

“Spoken like a true god…” I complemented.

“So, one at a time...”

It was 2 AM in the morning and I had to go to work. But it is not like I am going to have an ugly apparition in my bedroom every night. Well, at least, as long as I am not married. So I said,

“Yeah, I have time”

“But, I don’t have, Monkey boy. So, limit yourself to legitimate questions”

God began to make more sense. I thought he liked the fact that I had provisionally accepted his ‘642.39’ answer.

“What do you mean by legitimate questions?” I asked.

“The mere fact that it is possible for you to frame a question in your ape language doesn’t mean that it is a legitimate question” God said.

“I don’t understand” I admitted.

“I suppose if I had only 100 billion neurons in my brain I wouldn’t understand too” He mocked.

“Hey, that’s offensive. Not that I care one way or other about my neuron numbers. Still…” I said.

“See, a question like this is not legitimate…”

“Like what?” I asked

“Like - What is the shape of happiness?”

“Oh” I said.

“You see my point?” God was needlessly proud of getting his point through.

“Yeah, I got it. I have a classic illegitimate question. Do you want to hear that?”

“Why would I want to hear that?”

“Just for the heck of it”

“Okay, what the hell?”

“Where do people go once they are dead?” I said.

God writhed out of disgust on hearing this question. His pink prosthetic face showed deep anguish.

“Did you make this one up?” God roared.

“No, people ask this always” I said.

“Gosh, even after four billion years of evolution?”

“Yes”

“I am glad that Gorillas haven’t evolved talking yet” God quipped.

I laughed. I was happy that there is at least one other speaking entity that finds this question equally crazy.

“How do you answer those folks?” God asked.

“Well, the room is dark now” I realized that I hadn’t turned the lights on. I switched on my table lamp.

“I have turned the lamp on. Do you see what happened now?” I asked God.

“Err… the room is filled with light”

“What would happen if I turn the lamp off?”

“The room will become dark again”

“So, where has the light gone?”

“That’s not the right question to ask, you little prick. Light is nothing but the result of lamp’s functioning. Now that the lamp is not functioning, you won’t see the light”

“Ergo” I said, “That’s what I am telling people. Life is nothing but the functioning of this body. When you are dead, you don’t go anywhere. Just that your body stops functioning”

“Do they agree?”

“Well, not many”

“What’s their take on this?”

“They say something called soul comes from the world where God lives; visits this planet for a while and goes back”

“And you don’t believe in that?” God was curious.

“Not a bit”

“What stops you from accepting the majority viewpoint?”

“Commonsense?”

“Well, not bad for one billion neurons”

“Never mind” I was modest.

“But they have one billion neurons too?” God pondered.

“Well, I grew up reading Darwin” I answered.

“What is Darwin? Is it another bipedal ape like you?”

“Yep, he lived more than a century back. His name was Charles Darwin”

“What do I care?”

“Well, he had a popular grandfather. He was a Darwin too. His name was Erasmus Darwin” I explained.

“What did the Erasmus ape do?”

“Listen, I agree we all descended from apes and we share ninety nine percent of our DNA with other non human apes. But you don’t have it rub it on our face every time. You can address him as Erasmus”

“Yo, Chill, I was just being forthright”

“Erasmus and few other folks started something called lunar society. This society meets every full moon day -”

“Is that the brown stuff that keeps your planet from wobbling vigorously?”

“Uh, yes… Erasmus and other folks from lunar society discovered how living beings evolve and -”

“Hold it right there, Monkey boy!” screamed the God.

All his thirteen light sensitive photo cells looked at me as if I were a frog smacked by an over speeding truck in a national highway.

“Uh?” I said.

“Did it take four billion years for you idiots to figure out this simple concept? It is written all over this planet”

“Well… Err… ugh; I can’t speak for the Dinosaurs and Neanderthals. They lived way before us. But speaking for Homo sapiens, I agree we took unusually long time to figure this out. Worse still, there are people who still want to see themselves as fallen angels and refuse to accept the concept of evolution”

“So sad, you know...”

I could see a lump in God’s throat.

“Anyway, Erasmus wrote an excellent book called Zoonomia. It’s one of my favorites”

“What’s that book like?”

“It is poetic treatise on evolution”

I recited my favorite poem from Erasmus.

“Nursed by warm sun-beams in primeval caves, Organic Life began beneath the waves Hence without parent, by spontaneous birth, Rose the first specks of animated earth”

The poetry didn’t have any effect on God. He gave me a blank stare. Either He was incapable of appreciating human poetry or I wasn’t doing it right. After few seconds of serious consideration, I attributed the flop to his inability to comprehend and moved on.

“So your immediate ancestors didn’t believe in the soul either?” God asked me.

“Well my mother sort of believed. She used to visit temples on Fridays”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, Have you heard her prayers?”

“No, I am off on Fridays”

“Oh” I paused “Now I know why her son is spoiled a bit”

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