The Fig Tree

I live in Bangalore, the Garden City of India, but I always wonder why I don’t visit gardens often. So today I leave office early to have enough time to relax in a garden. I go to a garden nearby my house. It’s small but beautiful. They always are. The gardens! As soon as I enter the garden, I see sea of people there. Children are playing and shouting at each other. Elderly people are talking about range of topics.  I find a couple sitting on a bench, holding each other’s hands. They are whispering to each other, careful enough not to give hint of what they are talking to anyone else. There are a few joggers who pass by me in hurry.  

 

I try to find a place to sit on. As it’s evening time, all the benches are occupied, so I go to the centre, where some people are sitting below a tree. Quietly I sit down. I see a kid playing Catch-Me-If-You-Can with her mother. He is running happily, looking back and forward time and again. The mother is enjoying the show and is in no mood to catch the boy. No prizes for guessing who the winner is. Over the years, the mothers have always lost the game to win the hearts. What a blessing the mothers have been to…Thud. My train of thoughts derails by a sound of sudden thud. I see around me, but don’t find anything. Another thud troubles my ears after a while. This time I see a fig falling from the tree I am sitting below. The evening breeze is good enough excuse for some of the figs to let themselves loose. In a few moments many figs fall down from the tree. One fig lands just an inch away from my legs. Another one misses my back.

 

I look around me; there is a bunch of those figs. It amazes me that not a single fig falls down on me. Given my affinity towards attributing all the happenings of the world to chance and randomness, I think myself lucky to survive the onslaught of the figs. Not that any of those figs would have hit me hard enough to crush my bones, but the impact of the sound and the effect on the mind makes you afraid of the consequences. It’s like the shoe-throwing game people play with politicians in the great Indian Election drama of 2009. Almost no one has been injured by the shoe-missile but everyone is fearful in the anticipation of the next shoe hurled at him – all the politicians have (not) done enough to be eligible, and I am sure some of the politicians might have nightmares and a few would have sleepless nights. The probability of a fig hitting me was considerable, given the large number of figs on the tree and the small area where they can land themselves. So I happily assume that I was lucky not to have been at the receiving end of the Russian Roulette. I was randomly selected to be lucky.

 

But there is something inside me which refuses to accept this randomness theory. I survive from the falling figs, but so do others sitting below the same tree, and there are many of those. The certain thought of God crosses my mind. Lets be honest; it doesn’t cross, it just stays there. In those innumerable battles within mind between the faith and the logic, I have seen the logic persisted most of the time, giving a hard punch to the faith. The only refuge I find in those times is in Blaise Pascal’s wager. But today seems to be different. I see the hand of God in giving me a chance. Probably He is there between those two figs landed in front of me and back, and He is everywhere else. May be He is inside me (I refer to God as He only for the sake of convenience. I would rather like feminine form of God – more loving, caring, compassionate and beautiful). “The best place to find God is in a garden”, said George Bernard Shaw, “You can dig for him there“. The thought of having him around pleases me and gives a sense of security. When I see around, it’s dark now. The night has slowly started spreading her wings. The God inside me is hungry and I realize that the food is not far away.