A myth that lived forever

The greatest fear of the mankind has been the thought that their existence has no meaning and that they might be living a life just like any other form of life in front of them – meaningless and painful. Man, thus, created myths and myths proved to be powerful enough to be able to echo till eternity. He wanted to be fooled. That’s what we have watched in The Prestige. We knowingly choose not to watch too closely. Why could only few people come up with intricacies of nature and its laws? Because, the ability to question the well established beliefs has never been a privilege of the majority. As if by some law of nature, time and again circumstances around a person grow such that he becomes ardent in his perception about life and gets drawn towards free thinking rather than following the crowd. I do not intend to come up with any sort of criticism for those whom I group into ‘the majority’. I have just tried to figure out what we actually are and why do we act in a certain way.



There are many mountain ranges and there can be made many arduous paths through them each ending at a dead end. But man will never walk on any of those. As the journey will be painful and the climate will be extreme coupled with the fact that it will end in a dead end. The same man will easily find value in the journey if someone tells him that a God once kept His foot on the very same point where the path ends. We do not want to accept that the world is without a God and that there is no one watching us. We just want to believe that against all odds, there is surely a God and every single event in our tiny lives has a value in it. The idea of life full of pain and anguish, with a meaningless dead end can impress no one to go on walking and walking. We make relationships, we attach emotions to things we possess and we care. As time passes we amass enough around us, to realize that we need to take responsibility of it all. Then we turn to stories of past and bring out meaning in them, map them to our lives and move on. The way of life we human beings are living, is a classic case of fear getting converted to beliefs and beliefs getting converted to actions. No matter how much we study, no matter how many degrees we amass and no matter how many a times our belief shakes, we make ourselves believe that we are beyond time and that we are not the body but an unperceivable soul.



The picture that I see leaves me emotionless. Just like millions of ants crawling around, we human beings move in herds. We chant mantras, we perform rituals (some Indians hold pujas for Sachin expecting the Gods to come down and help him score his century). Against all odd, we want to believe that there is one merciful God, who cares about us and has such a great bandwidth that each one of us is under His supervision. I myself pray a lot whenever I am in pain. But now I have realized that praying helps because it helps you to clear your mind and when mind comes at rest the whole body becomes calm. Meditation helps and to meditate if we focus on some God, then again I see no wrong in it. Belief helps – agreed. The point is, we do not get out of it even once and try to see the grand meaninglessness. Let say, for once, we realize that we can be fools to be giving so much value to colorful rock pieces, jewelry and all the man made luxuries as we all are living the same lives as that of an ant and we all have the same fate in the end of this

journey – a dead end, wont we lose our all purpose of life, our reasoning, our ego, our bid to explain each and every single thing we see. ‘Don’t think too lowly about yourself, have some self confidence’, is the maximum a teacher can

throw at me on my arguments proving the pointlessness in the home assignments and examinations. But there again I see an ignorant human being, who is not equipped enough to answer his student, who fears the validity of the student’s convictions, who fears the randomness and chaos that can be unleashed once the ideas become accepted.



Myths echo till eternity. They are powerful enough to engulf the human race in them and make them act the way the

originator wanted them to act. Women have burnt themselves alive with the burning bodies of their husbands on this land only. Cows and buffalos have been sacrificed in front of stones believing that Gods will become happy. Dates have

become festivals and months have become holy. People are ready to blow themselves up in public, as they are (as per the perception of the masses) brainwashed . If a Islamic fanatic is made to believe that there is a heaven after death and a sacrifice in the name of Allah will make him immortal, then we term him as a terrorist and loath the ideas that are injected in him. I see no difference in the Hindu beliefs. The only thing is that Hindus have, in general, not so far indulged in such things (and that does not make them any different or any superior to loath any other set beliefs. After all we are cow herds, grassing in different pastures. What we eat may be different, but what we do is the same). The central idea of every religion is the same. The mass following a religion can be made to do anything. They are weak and full of fear. They fear the unknown Gods. They do not want to accept anything beyond the Holy books. Again, I will take a halt here and reiterate what I said earlier, that I do not loath beliefs. I do not intend to look down upon

the group of people, whom I refer to as the majority. I just want to make the reader of this article, wait for while. Stop arguing. Stop thinking. I want you to imagine a millions of ants crawling. I want you to see it.