There was a time when my friend opened the large window of his apartment in Navi Mumbai and enjoyed the view of adjacent hills. That view is now crumbling. His corner of town has been infected by Gods with a voracious appetite for real-estate.

No space for environment

A couple of temples, a church and a mosque were around in that area, even years ago. But today my friend opens his window to four or five such structures within the visibility of its frame. Where it was once scrub forest-hill, these structures stand, on bulldozed earth. They are all next to each other and justified because each belongs to some sect demanding its own separate hot line to God. Two-minute walk away, there are more structures. That nook should now have the highest per capita divinity in India.

It may still prove inadequate for there is no end to perceived insecurity in well settled life, where the wellness of settlement is measured by money in the bank and social status. Prayers matter. Soon the lower hillside will be flat, the trees will be gone and we will have many Gods to worship as compensation for nature lost. If only religion, which wields so much influence over people, would tell its devotees to support the cause of environment. Unfortunately, we do the opposite. God can’t wait. Environment can.

Amar Akbar Anthony

Every society imagines with unique co-ordinates. In the 2013-2014 Railway Budget, the Railway Minister was especially sensitive to pilgrims, introducing improved trains for them besides trains connecting the favoured centres of God. I suppose you could take a leaf out of Bollywood and make it seem Amar, Akbar, Anthony with trains that connect diverse faiths in an endorsement of our secularism. Actually we could have an Express Train named so. Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Sampark Kranti, Amar Akbar Anthony — it rhymes.

And since this is how tax payer’s money is spent by our God-fearing, vote bank-loving governments, probably all our industries and industrial zones should shift to pilgrim centres. With God alongside, you enjoy priority when it comes to infrastructure. He gets connected by rail. Law or no law, He effortlessly occupies real-estate. He gets tonnes of money. Even when inflation batters you, you drop a coin off for Him. So shift to God’s address, and there, the government we elected from our God forsaken addresses elsewhere will provide us the essentials of life. Be it desert, mountain or deep sea, they will lay roads; railway lines, construct international airports, build houses, hotels – the works.

Pilgrimage economy

Or, we bring God to the neighbourhood and get a pilgrimage economy going to ensure that the government doesn’t ignore us on the map. My friend could advertise the five-Gods-at- one-look advantage of his window and convert his living room into a profitable viewing gallery with seats priced as in a multiplex. Instead of people leaving their cars and walking up the hillside to access each shrine, they can take the lift, reach his apartment and connect from that one window — like a single window-clearance. Unfortunately my friend is agnostic. He isn’t business-minded either. He just wants some green hills.

I think those Gods know this. I won’t be surprised, if one day they cast aside the divine masquerade and make their shrines into rich trusts with public land for collateral or apartment blocks marketing the real truth — hill as real-estate. After all, if He can’t work miracles, what is God? And what is a miracle in India, if it isn’t eventually the stuff of gold?

(The author is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai)

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