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Is God what holy books tell us or is he one of us? All of us at some point have wondered about his existence and nature, whether we're a believer, atheist or agnostic. Artists have continued to give their own meaning to godliness. Art provides us with the freedom to visualize and imagine and create our own meaning of it and that helps us connect to ourselves better - well, that is what god is in some religions. Ananya here sees him all around her and her personification of him make it rather a relatable act for us. Come, experience this beautiful journey with her.
Bleeding God
On Saturdays God dresses up as Mickey Mouse and dances for the orphans, urchins, refugees and hopeless creatures. On Mondays he works as a waiter in McDonald's. On Tuesdays he is a stripper clad in shimmer and bruises. On Fridays he is a pick pocket pestered away in local trains. On my way back home last week, I met god disguised as a balloon seller by the footpath. His hands bruised by the grip of not letting the breath in his balloons evanesce in the air. A hot blooded pious figure sitting by the road with a few paper cuts on his tongue stood up like a paralyzed flamingo on seeing me herald. In my learnings of god and his demeanor I have been made to learn he is an utterly breathtaking narcissistic, who would definitely crush daises under his UK 9, godliness over years is made to sound like a cliché for humanity to seem less bizarre. In the acute somnolence of noon, my rendezvous with him was an imitation of cutting lemons, of me knowing my unknown bruises only when it aches. I am taught to kneel down at his feet in the commemoration of his godhood, as I begin to search his feet I find he too has holes in his socks, it is me trying to ignore his protruding toes and him trying to hide it as much as possible, vulnerability is not always inversely proportional to worshipping. As the sun subverts in the sky half legged in a wheelchair decorated with stars, I know I am getting late and yet I am frozen staring at a homeless, faceless, prayerless man breathing life in balloons. God doesn't understand marketing as well as us humans, if he did he would sell religion to atheists as a gift wrapped in perjury. I want to witness him bleed tonight, only to know if he bleeds the same as what I bleed. As I pass by him, he offers me a balloon I am solemnly polite to refuse, and he is persistently polite to not offer again. Everything political lays eggs within humans disguised as everything polite. I know, I know he is God perfectly because he didn't nudge, he didn't
run, he didn't bargain nor did he negotiate. A middle-aged god with an identity crisis, who
really is he outside the temples? In a world made of men and women there's no space for
God to sit on his haunches until he is besieged by them on the podium like a ventriloquist
dummy. If you meet him by the lanes tomorrow distributing pamphlets dressed as a clown,
maybe you'll shoo him away. In the worlds where gods were the talkers, worshipping was
renamed as dictatorship. You only talk to God till he is mute, senile, and dead.
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For the love of art,
Ananya Aneja
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