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