• Prema Jayakumar

I had visited an astrologer recently at the request of a friend as she was worried about her son.  A brilliant young man, he seemed unable to keep jobs.  But while he was in a job he performed extremely well.  As she couldn’t find any rational everyday explanation for what was happening, she was seeking answers elsewhere. The astrologer was reassuring as to the times being good for the boy, said he would get a job soon and would do very well at it.  He also suggested some offerings and prayers, nothing very difficult.  I wondered why people sought reasons for something that happened randomly.  Perhaps it was because of the very randomness of the happening.

I think human beings have a basic need for order, for happenings to have a cause.  You attribute your misfortunes to the sins of a previous life since you think you have led a fairly blameless life this time round.  Or you attribute it to God’s will, hoping that he is trying you, purifying you to a higher end.  You would rather that you were chosen, fated, to go through the sufferings that you are undergoing, rather than that these were random happenings and you just happened to be in the way.  You would rather tell yourselves, ‘The lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of troubles’. Or one would rather say, ‘The fault is in our stars,’ to misquote the Bard, is a rather comforting statement to someone who is trying to make sense of nonsense.

We are accustomed to thinking of the world as anthropocentric and can’t get ourselves to believe that we are not under some sort of special care or at the very least some sort of special scrutiny where there might be punishment, but there is also recognition.

No wonder, all religions start with the Creator bringing order out of the chaos before the actual process of creation begins.  There is no way that chaos could be a setting for life to begin on earth.  First comes the order and then the creativity.

I had mentioned in one of the earlier columns that this need explained the popularity of puzzles and murder mysteries.  We are trying to impose order on a world where rules are suddenly broken and no one knows why.  When natural order is interrupted, chaos is the result and peace returns when the natural order is restored.  And what the detective story is about is not just murder but the restoration of order.  Very often the ending seems banal because once order is restored and peace returns there is nothing to get excited about.  You know, the old bromide ‘And then they lived happily ever after…’

Even puzzles that start as random and scattered pieces serve to satisfy our craving for order when we sort them out and put each piece in its place.  Chess problems, Sudoku, cross word puzzles, all these serve to fulfil our need for an ordered existence be it of numbers, words or of the world around us.

Sometimes even conflict serves to give meaning to life since conflicts present an enemy you can recognize and a solution that is possible even if distant.  Like Anna Fierling in Mother Courage who says, ‘They have gone too long without a war here.  Where is morality to come from in such a case, I ask?  Peace is nothing but slovenliness, only war creates order’.  In peace, the lines are blurred, there are no proper enemies, there is no course of action that leads to a resolution, in conflict there is a right and wrong, and therefore war is more moral than peace.

Rather shocking statement to our modern sensibilities, but it makes sense in its simplicity.  This very simplicity keeps chaos at bay, you see.  Which is perhaps why people in power often point the attention of the populace to some real or imagined ‘other’, either within the country or outside, whom they can demonise and fight if necessary, pointing to something or someone as the cause of evil or sorrow in the lives of the people.

It takes great strength of will and even greater courage to remain at peace with a world that shocks you with its random cruelty and you seek the answers in stars, or if you are lucky, in faith.