In the potter's village: Chapter 9 (of 12)

Rahman: I am Rahman, a potter by profession, and a free human being created by the Creator who created us all. I arrived at your village, which has accepted me graciously ever since, over 3 years back. My task was to work as a potter, which I have done as honestly and in as committed a manner as I could have. During this time, I have come to interact with some of the most interesting people I have ever come across. And even as I realized this within myself, I could see all around me a great amount of disenchantment, and an increasing detachment from the lives that the people here felt had been forced on them.

I am a human person who has always found enough in my surroundings to make do with, be it in terms of subsistence, or the need to think, be questioned, and explore. It is this higher level need that I feel demarcates us from the rest of the inhabitants we share this world with; this ability to think is what enables us to experience the myriad emotions that colour us, to make sense of the world as a place that is larger than what we know and perceive. When I first came here, I found this propensity to think for one's own self to be severely lacking in all the people I met. The whole village seemed shrouded in a pall of gloom, one which everyone freely accepted, without putting up any form of resistance to protect their own happiness. This really pained me. In my time here, I have always sought to find out the reason behind this passivity. And for this, I have spoken to people; I have asked questions that seemed most natural to me, which would often surprise many people in how simple they were.

My guiding light, in all I have done wherever I have traveled, has been my Father. That you don't consider your Creator to be your Father is your perception, but to me, there is no truer form of guidance I have experienced, ever. How we see our relationship with that higher power is of course a highly personal matter, one that I have never advised or questioned anyone on. The time I have spent outside my shop here, and in some ways even the time within, has been a continuing exploration of the human nature, through the diverse sample presented to me here. Wealth, social position, family issues, vocational conditions, and a thousand others are the parameters that characterize each and every one of us, thus giving rise to a countless number of unique entities in our individual selves. Yet, there are these commonalities that transcend different boundaries in different cases, peculiarities that colour all of us in a similar shade; which is a fact that I find too interesting to not explore. And thus, I do. I question, I inquire, I find out.
I find out why the local barber is unhappy even after having married off his 2 daughters, and built a new house at the ripe age of 65; I question how the ruler of a land can stake claim to the produce of his subjects without being their servant, if not by brute force; and all of this I do, simply because these questions come to me, they surround me, as they surround us all. To ignore these little facts and puzzles is to ignore the very essence of life itself, which I hold too dearly, and which I find precariously deficient in all the people around me here.
If to open your eyes to the hardened, numbed unhappiness that you had come to espouse, is to "create unrest", then I have nothing to say in my defence there.

Honourable Mr. P1 had mentioned a "most compelling instance of my seething unholiness" in a sight witnessed by the priests. If that were to be true, then every namaaz we offer is an instance of said holiness. For if one were to attain communion with one's Creator, and seek His blessings and direction, how must it matter if that be attained in a bejewelled monument to His name, or in a hut that is as much His creation. What I see in that time, and how I perceive its presence in my existence, is a matter to be determined by none other than my own self, for it concerns no other being in this world. As for the sight per se, if it surprised or shocked the spies following me, then it is by virtue of the sin that they themselves have within them, for how can the embodiment of the Creator be evil or dark; how can the loving embrace from the purest light to have existed, made to a pure heart, be the seed for anything dark. The seed, thus, must lie in the mortal observer.

I am but a creation in the hands of my Father. My work here is done. I rest my case.

With that, he sat down.
The audience in front of him, judge, prosecutors and public, that had sat motionless, entranced and unblinking, suddenly came back to the earthly recesses of the courthouse. Karim on the other hand, could only weep.