ABRACADABRA

Abracadabra
Alakazam 
Hocus Pocus
Jantar Mantar Jadu Mantar!

Google search the word Abracadabra and it auto corrects it to abracadabra and other useless magic words. Looking at some of the phrases being bandied around these days, ‘other magic useless words’ seems an apt fit.

To continue with Wikipedia’s explanation of the same,  magic words or words of power are words which have a specific, and sometimes unintended, effect. Right again.

So while our planet and most of its inhabitants seem hell bent on self-destruction, our leaders continue to sway and mesmerize with such like phrases.

Global warming is at its peak with summer temperatures reaching unbearable records with little or no relief in sight. Elsewhere in our country, while wells dry up and riverbeds scorched to thin, snaking lines; even then in the midst of this, we continue to demarcate who should or should not drink from a particular tap. Worse still, the presence or touch of a person can supposedly sully the area so much so it needs a ‘cleansing’ promptly thereafter.

Meanwhile, we lie in wait for the rains, the lashing down of the heavens, drops of rain after a hot, scorching summer. The rains have finally come to my city but it is a mere trickle and not the soothing pouring down we are so used to every monsoon.
I guess it is a sign of the times. Parched. Thirsty. Craving the cool winds and lush downpour into our homes and our hearts.

We sure as heck need it. For everywhere else people have become crazed, doing and saying the most hurtful things, speaking unspeakable words and turning on one another in a frenzy of anger, hate and putridity.
It is become almost, dare I say it, fashionable these days? to resort to bitterness and outright hate. I guess decency and kindness have been flung aside in this manic urge to be heard and seen.

In that world,  someone like Rahul Gandhi, therefore, stands out as an aberration.
“Where they see differences, I see similarity. Where they see hatred, I see love. What they fear, I embrace.” And in his press conference a couple of months ago, after the election results were declared, he reaffirmed what he had been saying all along, “Pyar harta nahi.” Love never fails.

His message is directly antithetical to everything that this world regards and favours as power, stature and popularity, with emphasis being laid on the forceful, dominant masculinity and anything less  deemed as feeble, weak, unfit for any position or title.

It is confusing and easy then to ridicule this stance and that is evident in the manner in which almost everyone has taken a swing at him, including most of the media houses in this country.

And so, this.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Many people would term this foolishness, predicting and foretelling the guaranteed demise of whatever remains of his political career. Maybe so.

But after the show is over, the hocus pocus, jadu mantar, and while we may still yet be enthralled by the dazzle of it all, we do need to go back home, pay the bills and yes, wait for our turn at the well.

The only thing that keeps us going? Hope. And love.

Love never fails.