When God Vanished...

When I was very small I used to enjoy watching Ramayana and Mahabharata on TV. I believed that the people showed in those programs really existed and nothing could shake my faith. God for me had the image of a virtuous man who lived by sound principles and killed the nefarious persons. I actually believed that during their battles the God and the Devil shot their arrows at each other which collided mid-air and although both vanished there itself, God’s lasted longer than devil’s. After a series of such shots, a special arrow shot by God would wreak havoc and finally the devil would take his last breath.
As I grew a little older, I started disbelieving. But why? Here’s the story.
When for the first time I picked up my 9th grade physics textbook, the world seemed an entirely different place. Many incomprehensible things seemed to be more comprehensible than ever. Everything around me seemed to follow a law. I was the happiest person in the world when during the lectures while my classmates grappled with teacher’s questions, I didn’t have to think twice what the right answers were. But I felt sorry when I saw others not being able to discern the beauty of nature that was so manifest in the subject and instead complain about it being tough and complex. Days passed and turned into months. With half the session still to come, I was already over with the physics and chemistry syllabus. I dreaded biology. It ran my blood cold. Mathematics I enjoyed. It seemed to me some obvious facts arranged in the form of symbols.
Months passed into years and I learned more. Newspapers to me were now more than just how many 4s and 6s Sachin Tendulkar scored in the last match or what movie was Aamir Khan doing next. I learned that the parliament, its members, the elections, the president, the army and the wars, the economy, GDP etc. featured not just in the Social Science textbooks. There was some real stuff going on out there.
Meanwhile I woke up to a new consciousness in the form of MTV, Discovery and National Geographic. While I loved these, I couldn’t stand the sight of the daily soaps my mother watched (she still watches them, whereas I have started hating MTV). And then like a storm came the Internet. It brought with it Google and I found a window to the world. Google introduced me to Wikipedia and I realised that there was nothing that I could not know. In all these years I graduated from school and got into college.
And suddenly as if a thunder had struck me, I asked myself if there was any God. Even with all my knowledge and resources to gain more of it, there was no way I could answer this question.
I had come to know in all these years how man controls everything around him, how his actions bring him consequences. And so whenever I saw a person bowing to an idol or murmuring a prayer I felt uneasy. He seemed to me to be superstitious. The tales that I believed so ardently in my childhood seemed to me to be mere tales now. Nowhere around me could I see God. He had vanished into thin air. The question whether God had created man or man had created God stared starkly at me. And I couldn’t ask anyone for an answer. My professor couldn’t teach me. I couldn’t Google for it. There was nothing on Discovery channel that answered my question.
Eventually after a lot of contemplation, I concluded perhaps, it was the other way round. Man had created God, for if he hadn’t, man wouldn’t have remained man. He would have considered nothing other than his own well being and he would have gone to any extent to satisfy his desires. Someone had to be there who man feared and acknowledged as the most powerful of all.
Although I have a feeling that there’s no God, I can’t convince myself. Somewhere deep inside me, I feel blasphemous. I feel as if not acknowledging him would bring me misery and pain. Nevertheless I believe firmly that bowing to him doesn’t please him if you are not kind to others. If you join hands and pray in a temple and while returning home break the traffic rules, all your prayers go in vain. If you spit in public, damage public property, hurt someone’s feelings, there’s no use asking God for help with your problems.
O my God, why do I end up preaching something or other in my posts?