Miracles happen

Ever heard of a short story called The Next Voice You Hear...? I don't remember who the author of this piece of literature was but one can find it in the Reader's Digest Collection of Great Short Stories. There was also a movie based upon this work. The plot basically explores the question "What would God do to change the world as it is today?" In the story, God suddenly invades all radio stations across the world and starts communicating directly to humans.

Weird and freaky. But at the same time thought-provoking. There was one line in the tale that really got me "Everything you see around you is a miracle...but you have lived amongst these miracles for so long that you no longer recognise them as such" It is a brilliant statement and I can actually believe that God would say that if he ever got in touch with us.

For instance, consider food. You know, the stuff that goes into your mouth everyday? Yeah, yeah, that stuff. Ever thought about exactly what you shovel into your stomach day after day for your entire life? No, I'm not trying to be a healthcare evangelist over here. What I am actually talking about is the variety of food there is in this world.

If you look at most animals in the wild, they usually have a fixed diet. The deer eat plants and the tigers eat deer. Big fish eats small fish and grizzly bear eats big fish. But humans are different. Humans, quite literally, are capable of eating practically anything and everything in the world. Think about it...which other living creature in this planet eats things so completely different as smoked salmon and masala dosa? If you are a little adventurous, you'd probably be eating smoked salmon with masala dosa. There's a small miracle for you.

And cooking! I have to declare that the greatest human invention is neither the wheel nor the bloody nuclear bomb. Humanity's greatest invention is the art of throwing something into fire, adding some other materials and extracting something completely different from what you'd originally chucked in - the art of cooking. Just think about it - how in the name of god did someone figure out that if you grind rice with water, let the paste ferment and then spread it over a flat pan on a flame, you'd end up with a delicious food item called the dosa? How many mistakes did the inventor of bhelpuri make before he or she came up with something that would be sold to millions of people in the future? Human ingenuity is so amazing.

The natural world is full of miracles too. An oft-quoted example is how light emitted by a firefly is about fifty times as efficient as the best man-made light. Richard Feynman, the physicist, once noted that "The concept of humanity suspended on a tiny sphere hurtling through vaccum with eight other spheres around a ball of light is is much more incredible than the concept of a flat world suspended on the back of a turtle" Absolutely. Who can dispute that? Nature has an imagination greater than anybody else's.

Okay, now consider the amount of water that you use everyday for a shower. Now multiply that amount of water by the number of members in your family (let's say there are four people in your house). But don't forget that water is used not only for bathing but also for drinking, washing plates, cars, floors, dogs, cycles, machines and god knows what else. Add all these up to get the total amount of water used in your house everyday. Now assume that every household with a good house in your city has around four or five members and that each member will have a bath everyday. Multiply the amount of water that is used by your household by the total number of households in the city. Huge amount, huh? But that's not all. Industries, shops and other commercial establishments often use much more water than any single household. Take the amount of water used by these establishments into consideration. Now that's a massive figure. But let's go a little further. Multiply this result with every major city in the world. And before you stop, let me quickly ask you to account for the water that's used for every town, village and community based upon these figures.

Now you've got an approximate figure for all the water that is used by humans everywhere. I've never bothered to get the exact figure myself but I don't need a calculator to tell me that it is one mind-boggling result. When I first thought about it myself I was blown away by the immensity of it all. It was colossal. But here's the real punch - all that water which is used by humans across the globe is around ONE PERCENT of the total amount of water there is on this planet. Of the remaining 99%, about seven percent is trapped in ice around the polar regions and the rest are in the salty oceans, unfit for human use. And yet everyday, we hear complaints about water shortages - human needs are even more monstrous than the quantity of resources that is supplied by nature.

But the real humbling experience comes with this simple fact - so far earth is the only known planet in the universe that contains liquid water on its surface. A miracle so great that people ought be falling flat with wonder. And yet, not many do.