Amnesia

Written by Dileep Jhavari

Narrated by Bill Wolak

India

Whenever God goes blank

about what to do next

He sits with the children

watches them and seeks their advice

The children are unpredictable

They keep playing their games

or run away

or sit down and chat

 

To make paper boats and set them afloat in the flowing sewage

Or throw paper missiles at the teacher is the same for them

Wearing helmets and pads some run after a ball

Some catch ants to learn their locomotion yanking off leg after leg

Some search for the eggs hidden under the grass

break off the shells to see if all have yellow yolks

Some distract a spectacled newcomer

and scatter away some burden off his overstuffed satchel

while some chew off his pencils to see no more scribbles on the paper

Some scatter flowers with a swing of a switch and count every petal

Some are prudent and speak of their dreams to grow up unchanged

but fly the flag of their country all over the world

Some consider collecting all the candies in Halloween

Some like riding bicycles without brakes with no hands on handlebars

Some close the doors on the others to share a cookie with their girls

Some dream of collecting all the stars in their baskets

Some plan to gather all the birds in a cageless zoo

Some hallucinate ogres

And some dream of gliding over the oceans

 

Now you will understand why some are born

lame or dumb or autistic or poor or blind

Now you know why there are floods and storms and famines and earthquakes

Now you can think that a tiger killing a deer

And a doe yanking the grass from the soil are the same

Now you appreciate why the wars never end

Now you can comprehend the Big Bang and Black Holes playing with each other

Now you understand why you can’t understand this world

Now it dawns upon you that God is not concerned with you and justice and forgiveness and such things that our idle minds conceive. God is focused like the children who are sure of themselves and grow up no differently

 

Also, most children wet their beds