The Arabian Sea is in turmoil; its waves are violently dashing our shores. Rain-clouds are wandering in the sky and are threatening to bombard us with opaque sheets of water. Forked lightning, signals us that monsoon is close at hand and it is high time to clean our gutters.
But looking at most of the trenches in Goan villages and towns, reminds me of the disasters of dirty drains during past monsoons caused by laziness of those in authority. I feel that the cracked conscience, of autocrat and bureaucrat of government departments, does not force them to clean the dirt decorated water ways, even now at this eleventh hour.
Their wise minds do not understand that the slime, slush and slosh will choke the drains and flood the lanes when it rains on Goan plains. All this is because their habitual actions are not changed because their hearts are not changed; and their hearts are not changed because their minds are not changed; and their minds are not changed because they do not follow the dictates of their God-fearing inner conscience which says —“Duty is Beauty” and the other which shows the importance of duty is “Primeira obrigacao depois devocao” (First obligation, afterwards devotion) . So, they sit frozen in their seat busy over nothing. But hoping that some school children will get the message of PM’s, “Swach Bharat” slogan and clean up the fine mess in the drains; and make all Goan gutters “Chak-a-Chak”.
On seeing the ‘chalta hai’ attitude of authorities, we know, from past experience, that Rain Gods use their powerful hammer of strong winds and relentless rain filling all open trenches and flooding highways and byways; making overpopulated buses chug like motor boats and forcing people to waddle through the waterlogged streets on their way to market. Thus, in the past, the Rain Gods, like a judge, made the authorities guilty of their dereliction of duty and proved that such powers that be are a great weight to the earth and a great burden to exchequer.
The solution for such a situation, I feel, lies in the story from the ‘puranas’ which in my few words I write here:
A king asked his prime minister: “What is God’s work?” The minister did not know what to say. So, after asking many people, he finally, brought before the king a shepherd boy who claimed to know the answer. He said, “My dear sir, before I answer your query, may I request that proper practice is observed. You are a student as far as this question is concerned and I am a master because I have to give you the knowledge. The procedure is that the master occupies a higher seat than the student. So, the king slowly came down from his throne and let the boy sit on it. The shepherd boy sat on the throne and did not speak for a while. The king was impatient and shouted at the boy, “What is God’s work?” The boy calmly replied, “God’s work is to push the haughty down and to push up the humble.”
This inspires me to pray, that God may push the lazy authorities down and push up the active people on the seat of government departments.
