God Makers

 

Six-year-old Bhagya said pointing to five-year-old Animesh, ‘He can make a clay-god’.

Animesh immediately looked at me, his eyes shining with joyful eagerness, ‘I will make a god’. I was intrigued. I acceded to his request. He ran to the pond, collected some wet clay and set to work. In about fifteen minutes, the head of the god was ready. It had stones set strategically forming eyes, nose and ears. Then he declared, ‘My god is ready’.

I asked, ‘Where are the neck and the body?’ ‘My god doesn’t have a neck. She is all head’ he said. I understood that his clay-modeling skill stopped at heads. ‘What will you do with your god?’ I asked. ‘We will worship’ he said. Soon he and a few younger girls were busy collecting flowers. Within a few minutes, the flowers were arranged in a pattern around the god. Then all the kids burst into songs. They knew only a few lines but sang them repeatedly and boisterously. ‘What now?’ I asked. ‘We will immerse the god’ Animesh said. He took the god on his head and the kids followed in a procession. ‘Victory to our Mother!’ they shouted, ‘Come again next year’, ‘Kemon kore? Jam jamiye!’, ‘How will you come? With overflowing joy’. The shouts filled the village air. The god was back in the pond.

The kids’ faces were all shining.

 

The other kids who were big bullies and had degenerated into playing with coloured papers, looked scornfully at them. They called their own papers as currencies and the other kids’ currencies as idols.

But they wore long faces.

 

The Sun shone down serenely.

 

Swami Sampurnananda; Genre 273, No. 34; 13 Jan 2004; 9.20 p.m.