God in a Restaurant
"Only the weak and treacherous believe in God", he declared vehemently.
His friends responded, alternately assenting and shaking their heads. Endless arguments were to begin, never closing, branching out like growing tendrils into areas that none knew of beyond a few superficialities, which they believed were in fact the total. The setting was a small seedy restaurant with cracked plates, dirty faded walls and excellent service.
"Yes" said one, 'God is merely a figment of imagination, created by man himself as the end-all and be-all answer to all those perplexing questions that he cannot logically find answers for." He sat back, overwhelmed by the brilliance of his remarks, hoping that the waiter who had passed by had heard him and relayed the remarks - in awe - to the cook and the others in the kitchen.
"Fool", said another, a believer for the moment, breaking rudely into the momentary stupor that the previous speaker had lulled himself into. "God isaround. Be humble. Do you doubt the air you breathe that you cannot see? Because water has no taste, do you crave it less?" Here he broke into a Sanskrit shloka, which suddenly bubbled up into his consciousness from childhood memories, whose meaning itself he barely understood and was probably completely irrelevant to the discussion. The waiter had just passed by and he hoped that he would report to the cook that he had just served an astonishing intellectual, a man of God, who could smoke and philosophize profoundly at the same time.
Yet another, bearded, who believed that deep silences were the most profound, cleared his throat. He merely said "Hmm...” then he looked at the window and his eyes seemed to glaze as he apparently thought deep thoughts. Then he shook his head, muttering No, No, as his private intellectual joust resolved itself. From the corner of his eye, he saw the waiter serve the next table, within visual and hearing distance. He hoped that the waiter had picked up grave and subtle vibrations from him. Perhaps he would now report to the kitchen that there was a luminous persona at Table Six, whom he had been privileged to witness, dissect a question of deep import which was beyond him, a humble waiter, to actually frame.
The original speaker spoke, not wanting his seminal contribution to be lost on his colleagues - and ultimately on the waiter and all the rest beyond.
"See. Look at that poor woman sitting on the footpath across this restaurant. Of what use is God to her now? Her back is bent, with age and toil; there is no one who finds any value in her. In her eyes is indifference, no longer even measuring the movement of time. She has nothing to cover her ugly feet with cracked soles. She holds a staff merely to support herself. Why would she believe in God?"
He sat back, scarcely believing he had said such lovely words. He noted, with regret, that the waiter was not around to listen; he had disappeared into the bowels of the kitchen to convey an order - or perhaps to educate an awed audience about his brushes with intellectuals, masters of speech and thought.
The bearded man once again cleared his throat, and after a pregnant six seconds of silence, said, "The staff itself may be considered God, could you not say? It supports her silently and without comment and does not intrude in any manner that she might not want." The waiter had returned with a new pack of cigarettes he had ordered and had undoubtedly heard him. What might the workers in the kitchen think, to hear such profound concepts? Would they mature in a second, throwing away the web of their humdrum lives and always look back at this moment as the defining one?
And now The Believer said, "Indeed, as Kabir and Surdas have said, God is there in the most unlikely things, always supporting, never abandoning. For the moment, the old woman needs her staff. And in that staff is God. She does not know, because she is simple and merely lives life because she has no option."
He hoped that the waiter, who had returned with an order for another table in the vicinity, had heard his words. There was no doubt that he would report to the kitchen that there was a Man of Letters at Table Six who knew the ancient scriptures and who was able to find the answers to complex knotty problems tha the himself, a mere waiter, could not even fathom.
"Of what use is such a God?” asked the first speaker rhetorically, in a brilliant sally. He was mindful that the waiter must always remember that he had originated the conversation. That he controlled the table and all the thoughts that might surface. "To create and connive in such suffering and then to claim that he will always be there for her? This implies that God has a huge ego. But that makes no sense. Therefore there is no God."
The waiter was seen to return to the kitchen through the swinging doors, his white hat melting away, but flickering as the doors oscillated, shutting him away one moment and revealing a glimpse the next. Without a doubt, his words had been heard, thought the speaker. Perhaps the waiter was now in deep silence, pondering over the majestic display of logic, finding himself confronted by uncomfortable questions. I hope he does not mess up the order he had just taken because he is lost in thought, thought the speaker, chuckling noiselessly to himself.
The Bearded One cleared his throat. The rest waited, most impatiently, because he was going to upstage their own deep verbalizations with banal words that they found annoying and needlessly provocative. They noted, privately and resentfully, that the waiter had returned and so the timing was perfect.
"You are right. And you are wrong. In the old woman sitting there in the dirt and grime of this anonymous filthy road, perhaps we see God in a way that none of us is prepared well enough to cope with. We have been so deeply conditioned about God, that, try as we might, we cannot shake away the image of him as a benevolent puppeteer alternately punishing and rewarding, illogically. What events must she have witnessed in her life? Quite similar to so many others, and yet uniquely different. We dare not pretend that we might have answers to the unresolved questions of her life."
He stole a furtive glance at the waiter who was now at their table. He hoped that the waiter would recognize and report the existence of a man of deep compassion and understanding, of great tolerance.
The waiter had presented a bill to the small group. "Thirty Six Rupees, Sirs", he said.
He waited as the friends contributed their fair share and totaled it up. "That’s Thirty Five only, Sirs."
Oh?" said one, looking away.
"Hmm" said another absorbed in thought.
"I know!" exclaimed the first speaker, thrilled by the joke he was about to crack. "Ask that old woman sitting outside to give the rest!"
"Yes!" said the bearded one, warming to the idea. "She has provoked so many thoughts in us. She cannot do that for free!” He laughed, a deep hollow laugh, which seemed to roll gently around the room pushing its way through the revolving door that led to the kitchen perhaps to be heard by the cook and his workers.
The waiter was silent for a few seconds. Then he said.
"I cannot do that, Sirs."
"She is my mother. She is waiting for me. She has no money."
