The only good use of gods

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I took two pictures this morning while walking in the streets of Delhi.

We all know that Indians have more mobile phones than toilets. We also know that India needs more toilets than temples. We should also know that most public toilets in India stink, and women wait until they get a toilet even though public toilets are stinky, but men do not wait for anything, they urinate in public. Volunteers tried to stop them from peeing in the streets. They shamed men with their zippers down by drumming and blowing whistles, but it did not work. Men continued peeing and spiting everywhere. They love to pee on the wall. There were campaigns against peeing on the wall, there were posters like ‘Please don’t pee here, thank you’, ‘Please don’t urinate here’, ‘You have to pay fine if you pee here’ etc. But nothing worked. Men continued peeing on the wall. But when god’s pictures were put, men stop peeing on the wall. God is the only thing that can prevent men from urinating in public. I do not know any better use of gods.

Thanks Eve for eating the forbidden fruit.

‘When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.’ (Genesis 3:6)

God made such a mess of everything. It’s good that Eve and Adam did not obey god.

In the video, you would see Eve and Adam made a mess by obeying God.

Don’t you ever obey God, folks!

We are on Mars!

Does God know anything about Mars? No, he does not. If he knew he would have told us everything about Mars to prove that ‘he knows everything’ and we did not have to spend more than 2 billion dollars to send rovers to Mars. The books God wrote or others wrote on behalf of God are full of lies and filth: who should fuck whom, who should be flogged or whipped, who should be stoned to death, whom he will throw into the eternal hell of fire, etc. When God in the Sky and his disciples on the Earth that was created by God 6000 years ago are busy cursing and killing humans for wrong gender or wrong fuck we crossed 567-million-kilometer to arrive on Mars.

Our Curiosity landed safely. Let’s enjoy our victory.

The little six-wheeled rover Curiosity starts its 98-week mission, now exploring a crater that billions of years ago may have been filled with water. We are curious to know everything about our 14 billion years old Universe. We do not say ‘we know’ before we really know. We are not like God’s fan club members who without knowing anything say that they know everything. The difference between them and us is they do not need any evidence to believe in something. It’s true that the members of God’s fan club and we share the same Earth, but there are two different worlds on the Earth, our world is a world of science and humanism, their world is a world of fairy tales and hatred.

Therefore, God exists.

 

I asked my mother, ‘How do you know God exists?’

My mother could not answer immediately. After thinking about it for a while, she told me, ‘Look at the butterflies, how did they get  so many beautiful colors? Look at the flowers, how do they get their fragrances? What about jackfruits? Who put all the small pieces so nicely inside the fruits? How did they become sweet? Who put water inside coconut?  These prove that God exists.’

I was twelve years old.  I was laughing at my mother.  Yes, I  know well that  there are  hundreds of proofs of God’s existence.

 

A group of  believers  showed  me a tomato and a carrot as proof of God.

 

Another group of believers showed  the pair of  radish as a proof of God.

 

People find Jesus in everything.  Virgin Mary cries.   They see the name of Allah everywhere.  Hindu God drinks milk. So, God has to exist.

 

There are evidences for evolution. And those evidences are the proofs of God’s non-existence. We really do not need any watermelon miracle to prove that there is no God. Believers need miracles to defend their stupidity.

 

 

Mother’s Story

 

1

My mother’s eyes became yellowish, egg-yoke like.
Her belly swelled out rapidly like an overly full water tank
ready to burst at any moment.

No longer able to stand up, or sit down, or even move her fingers, she just lay there.
At the end of her days, she did not look like Mother any more.
Relatives appeared each morning, every evening,
telling Mother to be prepared,
telling her to be ready to die on the holy day, Friday,
uttering la ilaha illallah, Allah Is One!

 

They warned her not to disappoint the two angels—

Munkar and Nakir.

 

The relatives wanted to make certain that the room

and yard would be clean
that the perfume atar  and the blue eye shadow surma

would be present when Death would finally arrive.

 

The disease had nearly devoured her entire body;
it had stolen her last remaining strength;
it had made her eyes bulge from their sockets,
it had dried her tongue,
it had sucked the air from her lungs.

 

As she struggled to breathe,
her forehead and eyebrows wretched with pain.

The whole house demanded— shouting—
that she should send her greatest respects and reverence

to the Prophet.
Not one doubted that she would go to Jannatul Ferdous,

the highest level of heaven.
Not one doubted that she would soon walk hand-in-hand

with Muhammed, on a lovely afternoon,

in the Garden of  Paradise..


No one doubted that the two would lunch together

on pheasant  and wine.
Mother thus dreamed her lifelong dream:
She would walk with Muhammed

in the Garden of Paradise.


But now, at the very time that she was about to depart from this earth, what a surprise

She hesitated.

Instead of stepping outside, and entering that Garden,
she wished to stay and boil Birui rice for me.
She wished to cook fish curry and to fry a whole hilsa.
She wished to make me a spicy sauce with red potatoes.
She wished to pick a young coconut for me
from the south corner of her garden.
She wished to fan me with a silken hand-fan,
and to remove a few straggly hairs from my forehead.
She wished to put a new bed sheet upon my bed,
and to sew a frock with colorful embroidery—

just for me.
Yes, she wished to walk barefoot in the courtyard,
and to prop up a young guava plant with a bamboo stick.
She wished to sing sitting in the garden of hasnuhena,


“Never before, had such a bright moon shone down,
never before, was night so beautiful.. .” 

 

My mother wanted so desperately to live.

 

 

 

 

2

There is, I know, no reincarnation,
no last judgment day:
Heaven, pheasant, wine, pink virgins —
these are nothing but traps

set by true believers.

 

There is no heaven for mother to go.
She will not walk in any garden with anybody whatsoever.
Cunning foxes will instead enter her grave;

they will eat her flesh;
her white bones will be spread by the winds…

 

Nevertheless, I do want to believe in Heaven
over the seventh sky, or somewhere—
a fabulous, magnificent heaven—
somewhere where my mother would reach

after crossing the bridge,

the Pulsirat— which seems so impossible to cross.
And there, once she has passed that bridge

with the greatest ease,

a very handsome man, the Prophet Muhammed,
will welcome her, embrace her.

He will feel her melt upon his broad chest.
She will wish to take a shower in the fountain;
she will wish to dance, to jump with joy;
she will be able to do all the things

that she has never done before.
A pheasant will arrive on a golden tray.
My mother will eat to her heart’s content.
Allah Himself will come by foot into the garden to meet her;
he will put a red flower into her hair,

kiss her passionately.

 

She will sleep on a soft feather bed;
she will be fanned by seven hundred Hur, the virgins
and be served cool water in silver pitcher

by beautiful gelban, the young angels.
She will laugh,

her whole body will stir with enormous happiness.

She will forget her miserable life on Earth…

 

An atheist,

How good I feel
just to imagine
somewhere there is a heaven!

 

(The original poem was written  in Bengali.  It  was published in  Bengali literary  weekly magazine ‘Desh’. Bangladesh government  banned the magazine on April 4,1999, and seized all copies from the news stands. I was accused of personifying  God.)