“The Wasteland grows; woe to him who hides wastelands within”

Sometime ago one of my friends sent me a few photographs with a title, “Incredible India.” The photos were speaking the reality of India in a true sense. Some were about the beautiful gardens and flowers both natural and artificial, some were about huge buildings both modern and ancient with all its grandeur and some were about the garbage dumped in the middle of the city, the burnt houses and dilapidated condition of poor people. I am not enlisting all those clips here. What made me ponder over is not the incredible development we have achieved, but the incredible potentialities we failed to achieve.

These incredible potentialities I call ‘the wastelands.’ Phenomenologically speaking ‘waste’ is that thing which is unused. It may be a byproduct or left-over which is unused or used but not fully and therefore been discarded and thrown in a dumping slot. The waste can also said to be at time ‘dirt,’ which is nothing but ‘a right thing in a wrong place’ or ‘anything out of place.’ This is the reason, there are so many innovators who make use what is being rejected by people and become ‘men of grace.’

When tribals felt the need for plates to eat rice, they plucked the leaves from the trees, sewed them together with a stiff grass petiole and the plate came to be. To drink water or rice-beer they made cups out of the leaves. It was natural to them. Today, machines are being used to make echo-friendly cups and plates. Traditional Kerala people used Banana leaf for this purpose. Later, someone came up with an innovative idea, to make plates out of Areca nut leaves which sidelined the plastic plates.

‘Wastelands’ are there in every place. It is for us to identify them and make use of them.  The more we understand and realize the need for the time, the more we understand and realize that how less we know and realize.  The less we understand and realize, the more we will be in darkness as the master said, “Why didn’t you put the money in the bank so that I may get it with interest? Therefore, take out from him what he has, give it the one that has more and throw this lazy man in the dark.”

We are all blessed with power of reason: reason to judge what is good, better and best; and reason to judge what is bad and worse for us and for whole humanity. We are endowed with dominion: a dominion to care take the other as stewards and shepherds. Only we have the unbridled freedom to be what we ‘ought to be.’ It is only we humans have dogmatic and conceptual approach to reality may be philosophical or theological. But, are we responsibly using these ‘wastelands?’ There are some people who felt and are feeling the need to be used and hence we call them ‘prophets’ and indeed they are. Are not all called to be so?

For some people the issues like, poverty, development, literacy have become the ‘golden egg laying ducks' and therefore they nourish it. For some, though they are endowed with power of reason are unable to grasp the pulse of it. Take the example of new BPL strategy: those who earn 32 Rupees per day are ‘Above the Poverty Line.’ The question is, can those people who formulate such laws live with thousand rupees per month in any given situation?

We need to re-define ourselves, our priorities and potentialities. We need to convert the ‘wastelands’ with us into ‘Paradises’. Woe to him thousand times who hides his ‘wasteland’ within himself.



Fr. Raju Felix Crasta