Thursday, January 20, 2022

Spinning Webs, not Dreams...

The sky split open and a voice boomed from above: 'Thou shalt contest the elections from Mathura'...And there He stood, the cerulean blue vision of beauty and delight, holding the unmistakable golden flute, smiling mischievously. It was Lord Krishna himself urging Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath Nath to go forth and conquer his beloved city Mathura. How could the CM refuse Him?  Humbly he accepted.

The dream made headlines in the media across the country. People offered their oblations to the CM, the Chosen One. Who would have thought that such an epiphanous directive from the Lord himself could be overruled by the party high command? Yet, it was. And being an obedient cog of the party, he did not dispute the decision.  And disregarding the divine implications of his dream, he resigned himself to his assigned constituency. 

The Chief Minister's sputtering fire in the belly to reclaim Mathura from the Musulman would have to find its deliverance somewhere else. And his insatiable craving to pitch seething speeches to raze the Shahi Idgah Mosque adjacent to the historical Sri Krishna Temple, to a hungry and frenzied mob would have to wait for another time. For now, he will have to let his dream sleep. 

Interestingly enough, America's dear old ex-president (now an avid painter) George W Bush, in his waking dream, claimed that he was on a mission from God when he sanctioned the invasion on Afghanistan and Iraq: "I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did." He did indeed... It would seem that directives from On High are infallible.

Almost six decades ago Rev. Martin Luther King, in one of his concluding paras of 'I have a dream' speech, said: "I have a dream...With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."

One wishes that today's world leaders would change their sleeping positions; turn to living dreams like the one Rev. King so eloquently expressed, and help transform old hatreds into new empathies. All emancipated nations take their first step by learning to  create an organic  internal harmony within the existing demographics of the land, instead of divisions the way our colonizers did.

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