Earlier this year a US government official asked a NASA Administrator Charles Bolden what the space agency would do if a large civilisation destroying asteroid was three weeks away from striking Earth. “The answer to you,” replied Bolden, “is if it’s coming in three weeks, pray.”
Perhaps the Administrator had in mind the words of the physicist Oppenheimer who after witnessing the first atomic bomb test-detonation had quoted the words of Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
An atom bomb however is peanuts compared to the impact of a large kilometre or more wide asteroid which could easily obliterate our entire civilisation overnight — something like what happened to the dominant dinosaurs 64 million years ago.
There they were, those gigantic reptilian kings straddling the globe and strutting its surface, lording it over the rest of creation till one day the destroyer of their world too smote them in a trice and wiped their kind off the face of the Earth forever.
The wrong question to ask here is if it’s fair — because that wants to blame any demise on some answerable destiny whereas the universe is essentially non-judgemental.
But mainly it’s also a wrong question because it laments the futility of all our actions. One can almost hear the wail going up: but what happens to our overlordship of the land and glorious future history?
Ah but then how many listen to that man in the Gita again when he emphasises the need for action with detachment — nishkam karma? World destroyers can destroy nothing after that and there’s no need to pray.
(This piece was first published in The Economic Times)