Special Days

There are special days, when epiphanies stir and venture out from under rocks and from within crevices, and roam the land looking for unsuspecting minds lost in dreamy wakefulness. There was one such day in summer of 1957-58. The sun was playing hide and seek behind a migrating herd of cotton-wool clouds. Warm caressing breezes stirred the balmy air. Grasshoppers buzzed happily in the waving grass. One of those wandering wonders happened upon an eight year old boy immersed in a timeless moment. It pounced.

It was thus that I was awoken into the real world. It was this that turned my face to the sky, struck in awe and wonder at the reality that spread around me to the ends of time and space.

In a daze, I ventured inside where my mother was in the kitchen. I simply asked “Where did everything come from?”. “What do you mean?” she asked. “You know. Everything!” I indicated, spreading my hands out. Realising my state of mind, she said “Well. There are people who believe it was all made by god, and others who believe that ‘something’ has always existed”.

Again I found myself outside contemplating it all. For the first time I realised what was meant by “God”. Until then it was just a vague superman like character. I pondered her answers and there at eight years of age, standing again where I had been engulfed, I concluded that the 'God' answer just didn’t make sense. I had felt no such thing. 

Somehow I understood that for all the wonder and awe of the experience, for all its moving power, it was however all a product of my own mind. Awe and wonder gave birth to an atheist. From that point on I had an insatiable interest in science. I wanted to know about everything. I didn’t just want beliefs. I wanted to really understand how things worked and changed.

oOo