O l i v e r B e n j a m i n
background, and the announcer rarely used any hard words without
explaining them first.
“Hinduism is one of the world’s oldest religions,” the narrator
was saying over a heavy drum backbeat while images flashed and
melted into each other on the screen. “Most of the people who believe
in Hinduism are Indians—but not the Indians that gave us the
mohawk! Those are
American
Indians. Check it out: these Indians
live in a huge country in Asia called India, one of the most funky
cultural countries in the world. Lots of cool stuff has come out of
India—Hinduism and Buddhism, and also—
shampoo
,
pajamas and
ganja!”
Suddenly, clips of Krishna yelling at David Letterman were
superimposed against traditional Indian paintings of Krishna with a
flock of gopis.
“Krishna is like the Jesus Christ of India. He’s got blue skin, plays
a mean flute and loves the ladies, if you know what I mean. Legend
has it that he slept with over ten thousand women—
at the same time
!
What a
stud!
”
Bob watched with rapt attention. He had no idea his buddies
were so famous. He thought they were just a bunch of hippies who
were in a band together in the sixties. This show was helping to
explain a lot of the weird stuff that happened to Bob recently. These
guys really were gods, and not just the kind of god you mean when
you say, “that Jimi Hendrix, he was a
god
,” but the kind of god that
you mean when you say,
“God damn it,”
or
“Oh my God,”
or stuff like
that. The god Bob was supposed to pray to when he wanted
something.
Shit, he thought, then how come there’s six of them? The way
everyone always talked about it, there was only one God. You never
say, “oh
Gods
,” or “I swear to
Gods
.” If you said that, people would
think you were retarded. And yet, they were saying it on TV, so it was
probably right. Bob kept watching. The narrator eventually went on
to explain how these six guys are claiming that they are actually
the
gods, that they’ve come back to earth to judge man, and furthermore
that they’ve been causing the recent weather problems because no
one seems to believe that they are, in fact, serious.
The show wrapped up with a brief bit of editorial wherein the
narrator said essentially that since we don’t know for sure that they
aren’t the gods, we should at least give them the benefit of the doubt,
as all the lousy weather has sure been a bummer. “And remember,”
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