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Old boy Nostradamus came in my dream the other day, pleading, “It wasn't me, I am not to blame." He looked sort of unreal - wearing jeans and sweat shirt, beard shaved off, hair dyed - and would have passed as a young city slicker if he hadn't disclosed his identity.
"I had to change my get up", he explained. "These are bad times for people wearing beards and flowing robes. But I tell you again, it wasn't me. Don't blame me. I was just having fun some 350 years ago, when I wrote my predictions. I mean, I am thankful that people are buying books based on my prophecies, though, I never mentioned anything about the 11th day of the 9th month of the year 2001, when a metal bird would hit twin brothers and all that blah blah blah, which is haunting every websites, SMS and drawing room talks. It's all hogwash."
Nostradamus looked both disturbed and bemused, "In any case, what's the big deal about such predictions?" he said, “Anyway I could have told you that violence and destruction is ingrained in humans. It is a matter of who, when and how much." He then vanished.
Nostradamus' explanations have theological and historical validations. Biblically and in other "revered faiths" the origin of violence can be traced back to Cain and Abel, the first human offspring, both brothers, but destined to kill the other. In a sense that sets the tempo for mankind's propensity of hatred and violence. In other words, the symbols may change with time and place but the symptoms and actions don't. From the earliest to the latest, records of human civilizations has been replete with hatred and wars - minor, major, great wars, 100-year-wars, world wars... there has been no respite.
Fair enough, but how do you still cope with hatred and violence? What rationalizes when people are needlessly killed, planes crash into buildings, nations crushed? Make no mistake. Terrorism subscribes no religion. The killing of innocents is sanctified by no creed, nor by any religion or any country. Bigotry is, of course, an altogether different matter - of individual ideology of a nation. This seeks to exploit any avenue to feed to the lust for power, the urge to subjugate others. That is perhaps the heart of the real illness. What really baffles the mind is that while there is enough for everybody, half the world should live in utter misery and penury. When there is every reason for improving the quality of human existence with the wealth that is created, this wealth should instead be used for making and stockpiling arms, creating greater discrimination and divide among people, races, nations, all leading to global insecurity and paranoia.
I read an interesting anecdote about Dr. Christian Bernard - heart transplant pioneer from South Africa. Dr. Bernard once operated on an American patient who hoped he had been given a white heart. Dr. Bernard replied that he could not say," In any case, you couldn't tell the difference." In a sense that anecdote explains the human predicament. We are all in it together, as the jingle goes, and yet we are violently not!
Why Nostradamus?
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Maulik Baxi
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