By the time truth emerges from the margins, or even from the anonymity where it is pushed even beyond the page, so many generations of falsehood, untruth, half-truth, and sheer illusion have already ruled the narrative.
It is a pity that untruth and illusion are decked with romance, whereas truth takes all this joyous equipment way, and forces men to have a close look at their faces, takes the cosmetic layers off, and shows the pock marks, which irritate event he mirror.
In a film, nothing happens beyond the wishes of the director. Not a single scene can be taken out, without disturbing its narrative passion. He says something not for sheer entertainment. He conveys the message by creating a look-alike of our lives. If the director of a film is so curious to convey his message, and does not waste his resources on things which strike even remotely as irrelevant to his idea, can we expect God to be a lesser artist in any way?
To assert truth, goodness, fairness and justice, God has to run a pseudo-narrative in which half-truths, illusions, faces and facades dominate the proceedings. Men come to hold the belief that truth is a treason, and goodness a boobytrap. A society which runs on second hand narratives, spearheaded by people, who lack ultimate wisdom, is a clarion call for moral collapse. And this moral collapse takes place when truth strikes, when justice picks on the evil doers, and when fairness blocks the way of the offenders of God.
The world that we witness before us has nothing to do with truth. It has no faith in fairness. It has no stake in goodness. It is a gutterine world where good ideas smell foul, and people who do not believe in its dicta, are considered obnoxious.
In a way, in this world of the second hand, where a counter-narrative is put in place, the best, the truthful and the fair, are pushed out of the margins. Evil is so well entrenched, weaponized and empowered that the forces of good, truth and the fair face a still challenge, even to the existence of their protagonists.
But after all, this world is the world of God where His writ runs. If man has learnt the art of bedeviling divine equipment and belying divine intelligence, in order to run false narratives, it cannot be without the permission of the Director. The world too is a film with a definite narrative. When second hand people are running the show, they also develop the mechanism to keep truth and goodness at bay.
But, the evil forces are unaware that there is something in the cosmos, that does not tolerate duplicity, guile and deceit, and it strikes back. Truth triumphs but not before it has been badly mauled and molested, even to the extent of eroding the faith of the people in God’s powers to arrest the sewerine flow through the veins of time.
There is nemesis, the goddess of retribution. There is Goddess Kali who punishes the wrong doers. But, the narratives in the world tell a different story. Truth and the Good are rewarded, but at the end, and by that time, the evil and untruth have run several generations on second hand wisdom and damaged the moral architecture of the cosmos.
Dr Jernail Singh Anand, with an oeuvre of 190 books, is Laureate of Seneca, Charter of Morava, Franz Kafka, Maxim Gorky Awards. He is President of the International Academy of Ethics. His name adorns the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. Anand’s work embodies a rare fusion of creativity, intellect, and moral vision.
