Eagle told me this when I flew with it up high

By Kishore Asthana

Once, when I flew with eagles high, one said to me with a sigh, “You humans are such misguided creatures. You must have some awful teachers.”

“I’m a soaring eagle, sharp of eye. When I smelt smoke, even this high, I looked down from the sky. Nests were burning, I asked why, and I got this reply: We worship the Ice god, they worshipped Snow, and we often let them know, they must do as we said. They did not and they’re dead. We burnt their homes, sent them to hell. We did our god’s bidding well. These blasphemers with a false god, fully deserved what they got.”

“I can’t understand them at all. For all us birds, large and small. Earth, Water, Wind and Sun, keep alive every one. We feel the Wind God under our wings. We see the Sun and other things, but humans kill for an imagined god. We birds find it very odd. We can’t understand your hue and cry. We’ve never seen dead birds fly, to come and tell us after they die, about any god in their sky.”

“We birds pray as we wish, and so does every animal and fish. Our Sumurga has taught us well, ‘Don’t make up heaven or hell.’ A bird who says she won’t pray is free to do as she may. If another says, ‘I dislike the Sun,’ he flies at night for food and fun. Humans go to lands afar, to burn nests for causes bizarre, while Earth, Sun, Wind and Water, wonder at their wanton slaughter.” “Down there, I see you feuding men, and I can’t even remember when you didn’t kill like fiendish fools as per your own made-up rules. You men feel that you must turn countless smiles to dust in your unchecked fanatic lust, to prove only ‘your’ god is just. It’s sad to watch your savagery again, your gleeful infliction of pain. In the name of god you say is kind, in the name of god you can’t find, while you’re alive here and now, but you believe in, anyhow.”

“If it was indeed true that a merciful god cared for you, he’d have killed these murderers all, and made the mildest stand tall. But that hasn’t happened, we well know. These evil ones flourish and grow. Your meekest just sigh and sigh, hoping for better, when they die. And though none has returned after dying, they keep on blindly trying, for a heaven promised after life, by those causing all this strife.”

“I said earlier and say again, your elders have twisted your brain. You humans are such misguided creatures. You must have some awful teachers.”

“Away from your violence that I see, I stay in the sky, flying free, with our living gods, who I tell, ‘Please keep us birds and animals well.’ The eagle added, as I turned to leave, ‘I’ll tell you something you must believe, and tell humans in every quarter – snow and ice are both water!’

I’ve thought often about what the eagle said, what if we’d been like them instead, and never hated people for how they prayed, what a difference that would’ve made.”

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