Cafe Conversations II

Cafe Conversations

Sunday, 11.00 am

Zahir walked in the cafe to find an evidently miffed Abhijeet gorging on a walnut brownie. He high-fived him and took a seat across the table.

Zahir – “What is it? You sounded urgent!”

Abhijeet – “I won’t say it is urgent, but I am terribly annoyed!”

Zahir gave him a questioning look, asking him to continue. Abhijeet continued in an irritated tone, “You know about my bhabhi, right? She hasn’t been able to conceive for so long, and even the doctors have given up on her case now. She has been going through so much mental affliction already, and now my parents want to take her to a tantrik claiming that religious offerings and some rituals might have an answer to it!”

Zahir – “That is alright, dude! Let them at least try. There is no harm in that, right?”

Abhijeet – “Yeah, right! So you think the tantrik will send her some golden sperm attached in an e-mail, and she will download it into her!”

Zahir laughed as Abhijeet took another bite from his brownie. “And beat this; they want me to accompany them because they want the tantrik to prophesize about my future and suggest some kind of a havan or something!”

Zahir – “Abhijeet, you are just blatantly antagonizing them! Why don’t you just accompany them?”

Abhijeet – “You don’t understand, Zahir! They force their beliefs on me. Why can’t I just live without following any religion? Why do I have to make friends with the concept of an imaginary power up there? What is with the dogmatism?”

Zahir – “Since ages dogmatism has lead to conflict. We are living in a country where we are supposed to inherit religion from our previous generations. We do not have a choice!”

Abhijeet – “I want to make a choice on my own! If educated families like yours’ and mine harbour such blind faith and fanaticism in such self-proclaimed babas, tantriksand god-men, then I fear that the future of our nation is in serious peril!”

Zahir – “This faith runs down too deep in their upbringing, Abhijeet. You can’t change it. The most corrupt and immoral people decide to do an offering in a place of worship and believe that their sins have been forgiven. You see my point, right? Religion provides solace to wrong-doers in the perfect sense. It makes them lose their own perspective, imbibes fear in them, and by targeting the weak-hearted, it bring them into believing that they have been forgiven or they are now on the right path! That is how the whole business of religion works.”

Abhijeet – “But isn’t it like swapping from one erroneous thinking to other? I mean, looking at my parents today, I feel like religion has turned them into sheep by eroding their intellect.”

“Not just sheep, but sheep that has a lot of money to offer!” chuckled Zahir.

Abhijeet  gave him a straight-face. “I mean.. Why can’t we stop being such mindless minions? Why can’t we teach our children to worship hard work and believe in their own self?”

Zahir – “That would be an idealistic situation, buddy and trust me; we are far away from realism as of now!”

Abhijeet – “If I believe in a supreme power of God for once, I surely do not want a corrupted third party medium called ‘religion’ to help me communicate with my God.”

Zahir nodded, agreeing sadly. Abhijeet’s phone beeped. It was a text message from his mom. It read, “The hard work of the doctors paid off. The London doc says something can be done! Thank God!:)"

#Kava Brownsworth

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