Nazarébaddoor

People started squinting at Nazarébaddoor with that mixture of suspicion and admiration which human beings reserve for those who can foretell the future. The path to her cottage began to be well trodden, by lovers asking if their sweethearts would return their love, by gamblers wondering if they would win at cards, by the curious and the cynical, the gullible and the hard-hearted. More than once there was a campaign against her in the village by people whose reaction to abnormality was to drive it away from their doorstep. She was saved by her discretion, by her refusal to speak if she didn’t know the answer, because the visionary indolence which allowed her to push the future in the required direction could not be conjured up; it came when it pleased, and her own will seemed to have little to do with it. Only when she was sure of her ability to ensure a happy outcome would she gently murmur the good news into a supplicant’s ear.

As she grew into womanhood, her power began to filler her with doubts. The gift of affecting the course of events positively, of being able to change the world, but only for the best, ought to have been a source of joy. Nazarébaddoor was cursed with a philosophical cast of mind, however, and as a result, even her innate good nature could not avoid being infected by a strain of melancholy. Difficult questions began to nag her. Was it always a good thing to make things better? Didn’t human beings need pain and suffering to learn and grow? Would a world in which only good things happened be a good world, a paradise, or would it, in fact, be an intolerable place whose denizens, excused from danger, failure, catastrophe, and misery, turned into insufferably big-headed, overconfident bores? Was she damaging people by helping them? Should she get her big nose out of everyone else’s business and let destiny take whatever course it chose? Yes, happiness was a thing of great, bright value, and she believed herself to be promoting it; but might not unhappiness be as important? Was she doing God’s work or the devil’s? There were no answers to such questions, but the questions themselves felt, from time to time, like answers of a sort.

In spite of her reservations, Nazarébaddoor continued to employ her gifts, unable to believe that she would have been given such powers if it wasn’t okay to use them. But her fears remained. Outwardly, she continued to behave with happy, outspoken, flatulent ease, but the unhappiness inside her grew; slowly, it’s true, but it grew. Her greatest fear, which she shared with nobody, was that all the misfortune she was averting was piling up somewhere \, that she was recklessly pouring out Pachigam’s supply of good luck while the bad luck accumulated like water behind a dam, and one day the floodgates would open and the flood of misery would be unleashed and everyone would drown. This was why the pot war affected her so badly. He worst nightmare had begun to come true.

Have you ever wondered about the need for pain and sorrow? Have you been 'cursed' with a philosophical cast of mind? A mind that can't help but wonder about the greater cause in life, a mind that can't help but look beyond the obvious.... God’s work or the devil’s? have you thought about all the thoughts that race across your mind?