And then there was ‘God’

The tame bird was in a cage, the free bird was in the forest.
They met when the time came, it was a decree of fate.
The free bird cries, "O my love, let us fly to the wood."
The cage bird whispers, "Come hither, let us both live in the cage."
Says the free bird, "Among bars, where is there room to spread one's wings?"
"Alas," cries the caged bird, "I should not know where to sit perched in the sky."

The free bird cries, "My darling, sing the songs of the woodlands."
The cage bird sings, "Sit by my side, I'll teach you the speech of the learned."
The forest bird cries, "No, ah no! songs can never be taught."
The cage bird says, "Alas for me, I know not the songs of the woodlands."

There love is intense with longing, but they never can fly wing to wing.
Through the bars of the cage they look, and vain is their wish to know each other.
They flutter their wings in yearning, and sing, "Come closer, my love!"
The free bird cries, "It cannot be, I fear the closed doors of the cage."
The cage bird whispers, "Alas, my wings are powerless and dead."
- Rabindranath Tagore

My ever eroding faith in 'God' says to me that it will exact its revenge by reappearing and reaffirming itself within me, in time. I am more inclined to say, in a phony British accent- 'Thank you very much and good bye.' I think I can say that it has given me all that it has to offer, for now. Religion and faith played a humungous role in my upbringing and to shake off their vestiges took time and effort, in numerous ways. A friend recently asked me if it takes as much effort to stay away from faith as it does to stay within its confines. Depending on a number of 'environmental factors' such as how much religion has been fed into you and how much you absorbed when you were young and also depending on your personality, it does take effort not to pray to 'God'. Initially, resisting an impulse to pray was extremely hard. At the first sign of trouble, it used to be an SOS! But with time, I have been able to not do that, also with a lot more conviction. I think that if I did not break free now, I could not have broken free later. So, the degodification had to be done, at the earliest. It had to happen. Why? Why would anyone put themselves through that extra trouble to go in the opposite direction? Most people follow one religion or the other, for a variety of compelling reasons. Humans are fallible; it makes sense to depend on something that you would rather believe in, at a deeply personal level, to support you, nurture and insulate you against the sledge hammer that life sometimes chooses to be. If the sole purpose for your faith is to reserve a business class seat to heaven- Good luck! I stick to earth, this special place to which I am so attached. However, I will not pass judgments against 'God' and the 'God fearing', not because I am afraid one of those myriad Hindu gods will choose to poke me in my butt, with their favorite weapon of choice, but because faith is something that is extremely personal and not to be interfered with. Besides, I think that ‘God’, if it/he/she exists, has to be one that is forgiving. I seem to be contradicting my views here but bear with me on this for now. I will also add this- I will be tempted but I will not suggest therapy for you if 'God' actually talks to you. My reasoning is that if faith is a factor that is sustaining you and making life less miserable, by all means you can keep it intact and be happy.
Contrary to what a few people like to say, I do not think that Science and religion reconcile themselves in the distant horizon that your eye barely sees. I say man created ‘God’ and it could not have been in any other way and I give him/her all the due credit for that wonderful idea. We are also such wonderful creatures, so full of conflicts, so full of beauty, so full of IT and so little that we know. It made sense to invent a faith to supplement our very meager diets, incomes, assets and securities. Ah, that would be insecurities! It made sense to fill an empty pitcher with ‘faith’ and drink up the concocted concoction. Am I Ivan Karamazov, the purely rational being whose reasoning leads to evil and also to the denial of a 'God'? Maybe. Maybe not. More on this later...