Devils favourite guise, innocence
Prasoon Joshi
At a friends place recently, I observed his little son up to something. While their pet dog sat chewing some dirty-looking thing on the balcony, this little fella went up, took out a stone from the rockery and put it on the dogs tail.
The dog yelped, whimpering a bit tried to free its tail, which it managed. It was not a big stone so couldnt have hurt him much but Im sure it was a nasty surprise. The little gentleman watched this discomfort coolly. After which, this generally sweet cuddly child, who seemed anything but at that moment, came waddling towards me looking curiously at my iPad. I asked him why he did itmaybe the dog had yapped at him or chewed his favourite toy his answer? Aise hi (Just like that).
I was reminded of a famous International award-wining campaign for a brand of toys. What a fantastic one it is. It shows a close-up of an insect, its feet broken.
The headline says Why should he have six legs when I have two? The base line: Makes sense to kids.
Kids have their own logic. Call it devilish if you want. They feel it and they do it because they are unself-conscious, innocent.
I think the Devils favourite guise is Innocence. The higher your innocence the more comfortable your Devil will be.
A child is uninhibitedthe Devil part of him is very natural. The more mature we get the more self- conscious does our devil become.
But Innocence cannot be acquired. It has to be your natural state. You have to understand the rhythm of your being, to dance to the tunes of your true nature. Because, the truth is, that Devil is there in all of us. When we come into this world, we are very comfortable with our daitya (Devil) and our Dev (God). We dont know how to separate the two. But slowly man is taught to deny our devil. We are conditioned, made to look for the Devil consciously and avoid it. And because we are made to feel conscious of good and bad, right or wrong, we define a limit. We tell ourselves beyond this limit its wrong. Heterosexual is good, any other form: deviant.
Having 2-3 drinks is okay, drinking more is inviting the Devil. Thus, we mark the territory of the Devil.
You see, what we end up doing is making our own Devil larger. The best food for the Devil is ostracism. The moment you separate it, shun him, it becomes more pronounced, more potent.
When a lady falls, the child will laugh out aloud aunty gir gayi. Probably you will want to as well and may let out a spontaneous chuckle, but our acquired understanding of limits comes into play and we tell ourselves that we will not laugh.
DNA
