The mystery of the rainbow.

I had been out with my sister and her friends, the other day. It was 6 in the evening and we were on our way back now. After a cloudy, gloomy afternoon the sun was finally shining. And we were lucky enough to witness a rainbow. Wow! It was a feast to the eyes - especially so for someone who loves colours, like myself. It has been unusually rainy this year in June. We have practically no summer this year. The water level is nearing the danger mark and it won't stop raining :( We could see the rainbow only for a brief period as we quickly drove past that area and then it was no longer visible.

One of my sister's friends recalled how they used to teach us "Formation of a Rainbow" when we were in the tenth grade. I , as usual, was quick to reply with "Some miracles of nature were better unexplained". This post of mine might evoke strong resentment from technology enthusiasts. So, I'll add a note here:

 "Technology can be viewed as something that's already there, present in Nature in the form of raw science, everyday rules and waiting to be understood, shaped, refined and put to use. It's the human mind which does all that, which again is a part of Nature. Technology and Nature, to me, are very closely tied together. You couldn't have made the wheel if there had been nothing like rolling friction, Newton's Laws (I'd sound very purist if I call them Nature's Laws of Motion) and so on. Breathing in itself is a technology that puts some very well understood laws into practice, the only difference being that we discover it the moment we're created."

And if you still think I'm anti-technology, let it be. But you will have to agree that some mysteries of Nature were better left unsolved. The occurence of the rainbow is but a rare phenomenon. It happens very rarely and we don't even notice it everytime it is formed. Praise be to the Almighty (to some people, Nature) who created a marvel in the shape of the Human Brain, which has the capability to demystify such mysteries. But did we really need to explain all this? Science is very beautiful but mysteries are even more so. I wish no one had ever told me how the rainbow was formed. Though I realize (by virtue of having been a science student) that this explanation may, later on, help us elsewhere, in developing some other system or product, I can't stop wishing to go back to the time when I used to believe that it was the result of the union of The Earth and the Sky, the union that couldn't take place because it violated the Natural Law. If I'm being ignorant, what's wrong in being ignorant as long as you still have something to be awed and amazed at? I miss the time when a person's word carried a whole lot of sense and value than a written document. I miss the time when I was told that a demon would eat me up if I stole something.

While we claim to have bettered the quality of life by diagonosing and curing diseases, we have, in the process created several others that are more deadly and are killing people in increasingly greater numbers. There was a time when people used to die of pneumonia. Now the toll is manifold and the diseases (which are mostly self-inflicted and lifestyle-related) are uglier. In the process of research for better medicine, we have created bio-medical waste that chokes the cities now. Humans have created more problems than they have solved. What have we made in the end, better medicine or a mere joke of ourselves. I wish the Pandora's box had never been opened.

I remember trying to figure out in my mind how God was created and sharing the thought with my sister who then told me that it was a sin to think so. I'm glad that I didn't make any assumptions because I still have some entity, some concept, some God to be afraid of. Otherwise, I won't stop being mean and unfair to my fellow beings. If I knew God, would I still be afraid of Him? Would I still respect His omnipresence? Would I still fear Him? Would I still have faith? Would I still have someone to cry in fornt of, when I was totally broken and disappointed? Would I still have someone who would forgive ALL my sins? Could I still come back embarrassed and ashamed to the God I knew and expect Him to forgive me? No. Things would be different. I'd be fearless, faithless, hopeless and purposeless.

Some people (including myself) have been taking life too seriously. When we'll be dead forever we'll realize that this life has been very short and all of it will flash as a few scenes in front of us. We'll probably realize that we haven't lived it enough. We have been worrying about this life as if we're going to live forever. Like, seriously, why are we here and how long do we hope to stay? 70, 80 or more ? We, in our embarrassingly small lifetime, will do more damage to the Nature than it can ever repair. We'll make our children, our future generations suffer for centuries just because we wanted to have a more luxurious lifestyle, we wanted to have more money than anyone else, we wanted to build huge sky-rises and one day, all of a sudden die, probably in one of those pyramids (meant to signify coffins here) that we had built. The Nature is bigger and older and will stay longer than anyone of us will.

Is the Taj Mahal more beautiful or is the fact, that the hands of all those who built it were chopped off, uglier? Will my children really praise me if I left them a huge mansion or will they curse me for they will have no clean air to breathe, no clean water to drink, no colours to cherish, no picturesque scenes to inspire their art, no more oil to run the oil-dependent factories that I might leave them? As I see it, they will curse me for all the damage I did to the environment that belonged to all of us for the sake of making my few decades on this earth comfortable. They will need a garden to play and not just a gaming zone. They will need food and not just money. They will need mental peace.

They will need to hear stories like the one about the Rainbow to fall asleep and not their physical explanations. If I end my blog with a conclusion, you will have stopped thinking by the time you finish reading the last line. You will tend to forget it and move on to the next chapter in your life. You will no longer remember the joy or excitement or disagreements (at least not all) that you had while reading my post. I never end my blogs with a conclusion so that some mystery is still there, so that you have more to think about, more ideas popping up, more conclusions than one, more to add to it- this is the power of keeping some mystery alive.

Comments, Criticism and Suggestions are welcome. Appreciation won't hurt either. Thanks for reading.