Prayer

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Do the beasts pray? Birds, insects and the immobile trees, mountains, rivers and all that nature has displayed between earth and sky? And who do they prey for what? Does the mountain pray for more height to reach the stars? Does the river pray for more crystal waters to show off the green-blue –red and dead sea, how beautiful she is and how musical her flow! What will Brahmaputra, the he- river pray for? A mate, a beautiful dancing stream to romance with? But do they-rivers and all know what romance is, what love is and what what the others desires are! The rivers are gods and goddesses accepting prayers, filth and excreta. The Ganga washes sins: Well what’s a sin? A disease of the body or mind? How is it washed away by the rivers? Niyamgiri too is a god, stones, trees, sun, moon stars are all gods. Who prays to them- the vast spread of nature beyond the range of eyes and the most powerful telescopes?

It’s only we humans who pray. We alone have invented languages, scripts and songs, hymns, epics and haiku and what not- gazals and all.  We have built temples, churches mosques and prayer halls- domes, cones, steeples of all sizes and shapes as if the stones and tree holes cannot receive the full import of our prayers. Some people close their eyes and pray without opening their lips. Others sing and dance in groups with instruments; those who do not have cymbals, drums or other song accompaniments just clap and nod their heads keeping time with  the mantras or songs , the rhythm perhaps compels the attention of the listener, the acceptor of prayers or the sanctioner or granter of our wishes. We have also invented a god and his variants, gender neutral abstractions. But to do gender justice we have goddesses-calm, beautiful, wild, violent and bloodthirsty. Why? Why do we pray? May be we are the most dissatisfied creatures in nature’s vast manifestations. We want more of everything. More food, more buildings, more fashionable clothes to cover ourselves, more power to torture and torment the weak, more prosperity and more success to enjoy prayers of the unaccommodated creatures.

Does anyone pray, o’ my Maker, my all seeing god, the prime mover  of everything , remove all disparity, make everyone content if not happy and make Me a good human being so that I’ll protect the weak from the tyrant, give to the needy whatever I earn and gather by my honest hard work? Well here too come other anomalies. In the modern world we have created civilizations of inequity. Those who have become powerful in military hard and software they browbeat and subjugate the less fortunate men and women in other countries. Jobs are not available, the machine – automation- has crippled human hands and brains. Natural resources have been thrown around all over the world unequally to create strife and war. Even if I pray to be a good man, my undefined ‘good’ may boomerang on me. No, I will not pray to be good as that too is an elusive abstraction.

But I must pray, as I do, my way.

O’ My Heart Mind Soul, o’ that which  makes me breathe think and speak, I know there is some power running my body machine, listen; you may be my Love guiding my nerves, sinews and blood flow to make me walk past temples without turning my head, you may be the energy I get from what I eat, you may be just anything which I cannot dissect and see for myself, the doctors too have failed to see: but you are something that makes up my I, my being. I pray to that I to live with the freedom of choice in all mundane things, not too involved to dissipate nor too superficial to be pompous. Just make me love my work, my concentration to see nothing goes wrong. If despite my concentration and sincere effort things go wrong not to blame someone else but to own up my failure and to start afresh with redoubled vigour and concentration. Never to do anything that will hurt another I or despoil another’s interests. Make me a lover of beauty, formal and natural. Art and creativity that enhances the zest for living not with lustful self-realization but with love for all manifestation. Let me not hate things that are meaningless or ugly, let me not covet things which cannot be legitimately mine. I must fulfil  all my needs of the senses and also the needs of my imagination by honest efforts and hard work. If I fail to achieve anything let me not fall into a brown study or invent crooked designs to achieve things. Let me like Byron catch my word at the first leap and if I miss it let me not turn back anymore. Let me not know sin or merit, good and evil; let me do my assigned role to perfection or the role self chosen to flawless completion. Excellence should not inflate my ego, mediocrity should not make me a moral coward. And the woman I love I should give her everything I can without expecting returns; may my love grow to make her my universe complete and beautiful. O’ My Heart Mind Soul make me live without shaming my self –esteem by demeaning my love in word thought or action. Victory be  to my soul !