Utopia

Most democracies grant their subjects the right to a full and happy life, if the subjects have the means to get around the quirks of their particular democracy.

In India, for instance, if one has unlimited funds with which one can bribe every government employee from the person who sweeps the streets (or leans drunk on his broomstick at the street corner, anyway) to the Prime Minister who has not even swept to victory in his own constituency, then it’s a wonderful life. In Bangladesh if one can cross the border over into India then the above holds true too. In the United Kingdom, one has to make sure to keep one’s face masked while looting random stores while the country is in the throes of violent riots so that when the rioting is over one can enjoy the loots of labour without being turned into the face of the I’m-so-virtuous-I-turned-my-child-over-to-the-police-for-participating-in-patriotic-looting magazine by own's righteous parents.

I’m not sure what the absurdities of other democracies are, but I’m sure each has its share.

But India is a country more curious than most; it has more than its fair share of eccentricities, like you’d expect from anything that’s more than a few thousand years old: its oddities are more convention inspired than economic-system inspired, having stood the test of everything from monarchy to the caricature of democracy, which is what in place now.

One of our least offensive oddities is that we have signs for everything. Signs that, on the face of it, seem bizarre but if you dig deeper you'll see that they stem from our fundamental lack of consideration for another's convenience and comfort, and a general contempt for civil rights.

Why else would we need signs on the gates of private driveways that tell us "Please Do Not Park In Front Of The Gate"; signs nailed into trees advising us not to "Stick or nail signs into trees"; signs on public walls requesting us to "Please not urinate here"; or signs in public parks telling us not to "Spit or litter in the lawn"?

Why else would we drive over the "Handicapped Parking" sign board in our rush to occupy that very parking spot? Or need a lift-man to ensure the safety of the very people who endanger themselves and him by rushing to squeeze into an already wheezing lift? Or need to be informed about the ‘Silence Zone’ around hospitals that only spurs motorists on to honk louder and more consistently than usual?

I see only one way out. Since we Indians neither fear nor recognize any mortal authority, it is only the threat of pain in the afterlife - everlasting pain - that can make us mend our ways. But Hell, as it is now, is not a very efficient deterrent to discourage bad behaviour. So to make our world a more habitable place, I have here a two-step process to put into place a more effective curb on our selfish ways.

The first is to make the penalty for not leading a model life so cruel that everyone becomes anxious to get himself or herself into Heaven. The second step is to open up the communication channels between the living and the dead. For unless the tormented souls in Hell can get their message across to the people who still have hope, the new Hell will have no advertisement; and marketing is everything in today's world.

However, the idea of a blanket Hell for everyone, one Hell to which all the wicked souls on earth go, is intellectually disappointing. It’s like a party for the Evil. Heaven, on the other hand, is more customized. Sure, there is the usual moksha, God's presence and white, puffy clouds. But there is also the fulfilment of all your desires; and of course every soul is going to have a different set of desires for which it has been sold. Heaven is so much more personalized.

This makes more sense if you think of Heaven and Hell as two, let us say, clubs or restaurants. One is reserved for the elite and the other, well, anyone can walk into it after paying a nominal entrance fee. Being evil is so much easier than being good, even in the widest sense of the terms. So the price one has to pay to get into Heaven is millions more, spiritually, than the price one has to pay to get into Hell. And for such a steep price a little tailoring cannot be begrudged.

This argument is specious: the idea of a blanket Hell leaves much to be desired.

Think about it: what is Hellish for one needn't be so for another, though both might be equally wicked; a relaxing dip in a tub of hot oil after a long, hard life may be just what the doctor ordered for some people for them to emerge all reinvigorated on the other side of eternity.

So what we need are alternative, even unconventional, rehabilitation measures to ensure that the afterlife is daunting enough to keep still-mortal souls on the straight and the narrow path of virtue.

For instance, when a young man who likes to fly down a congested road on his motorbike with his thumb glued to the horn drives abruptly into a lamppost and finds himself being tended to by the guardians of the ever-lasting fire, what we have is a chance to try to direct his more fortunate friends on to the path of moderation. Instead of a warm oil bath, we have a wonderful opportunity to let our creative sadism loose. Imagine how much more effective it would be if this young man, let us call him Unfortunate No. 1, found himself strapped down on to a Hayabusa, a magnificently loud horn at his disposal, an endless stretch of smooth, tree-line road -- just made to speed over-- rolling out in front of him; and only a foot that weighed as much as two bikes put together standing, as it were, between him and his paradise, for all eternity! Now, if, along with this, communication channels between Unfortunate No. 1 and his friends on earth were opened up, we’d be well on the way to Utopia, wouldn’t we?

Similarly, if each of us was faced with the possibility of spending eternity with the thing we love the most on earth just-just out of reach - for ETERNITY -; and unable to do anything about it, I think we’d clean up our acts pretty fast; it would be like the weight lifting off Unfortunate No. 1’s accelerating foot.

A terrorist given all the ingredients to make a bomb that would blow earth out of the solar system, but no mixing cauldron; a nymphomaniac in a chastity belt faced with a line-up of Brad Pitts; a politician with all the money he wants in Hell’s equivalent of a Swiss bank account the number of which he just can’t remember; I can go on forever, quite literally.

Make me Hell’s event manager, and the world will be a better place for posterity.