He Does It For Our Own Good :

He Does It For Our Good

God laughed out loud on His Throne in Heaven and said : "I've done what I thought best under the circumstances but you need to be cleverer than what you consider yourself to be to get at my good intent."

Rathin was unhappy finding his daughter, Anusuya, cultivating some of the same habits that he had had in his childhood and teens. She bought a jar with a Gold Fish one day and was heartbroken when she found the fish floating upside down on the water one afternoon. 

Her next desire was to buy a puppy. A relative's daughter was gifted one by a client of her lawyer father. The white Labrador looked so gorgeous when they brought it to Rathin's ancestral home one day. The whole afternoon, Anu (Anusuya was called as such by most of her relatives) couldn't have enough of the puppy. She patted its head, kissed it on the mouth, and felt lost looking at the puppy rolling its eyes or licking her cheek with its tongue. 

Right after the relatives had left, Anu approached her father tentatively with the request for a puppy. 

"I'll take good care of it, Baba, I promise. I won't let it shit everywhere and keep it under the staircase, if you want."

But Rathin was adamant. They couldn't keep a puppy in a house with the remnants of the Joint Family System. 

"Baba, Tumpadi has her pet cats. She doesn't care two hoots about how others feel about the cat poo or cat pee every where. Why can't I keep a puppy then? Besides, didn't you tell me last time that dogs aren't as ungrateful as cats?"

She couldn't convince her father though and had to discard whatever hopes she had of owning a puppy one day. 

On her sixteenth birthday in February, one of her friends gifted Anu a tubbed Rose plant and wasn't Anu on the seventh heaven? For the next few days she spent nearly all her time taking care of it - watering, placing the tub in the courtyard for the right amount of sunlight and even cutting it from the top when the plant started growing fast. Her delight knew no bounds when she found the first buds of the White Rose on a few branches. 

Rathin though was far from happy with the plant. One of his cousins had this habit of gardening. Soon, the roof was filled with plants of all sizes, shapes and smells! When the roof of the common altar room started leaking one summer, relationship between Rathin's parents and his siblings thawed with that of his uncle and cousins.

Naturally, he was totally against the idea of Anu nurturing the plant. Even then, unknown to Anu, he watered it a couple of times when he thought the plant was withering due to the extreme heat. The dried leaves of the plant scattered all around under the clay tub made Rathin think that Anu was actually committing the same mistake of dirtying the house as the daughter of his deceased cousin was doing. He even thought of asking his daughter to get rid of the plant. 

It was Spring season. There was Basanti Puja at the ancestral home. When at the conclusion of The Puja, the pandals were removed, the Rose Plant at a corner, behind the heavy decorative cloths, was found as good as dead. Its branches stooping low with almost all the leaves yellowed.

Rathin felt a pang of guilt. Could he have saved the plant taking better care of it? Why was God so cruel that when the only plant his daughter had, just like the Gold Fish, couldn't survive for long and died an untimely death when there was abundant growth of the plants and trees on the roof still?

Though Rathin knew that God was saving him and Anu from continuing with a certain sin, he couldn't stop wondering at God's sense of Justice and Mercy. Up in heaven, God was heard remarking :

"You commit a great sin when after having blamed someone for what you consider to be a sinful act, go on to perpetuate the same. Stay grateful, my son for I have saved you and your daughter from sure damnation today."