In India it is not any legal problem to urinate anywhere, wherever you can manage: there is freedom of urination. When I was nearabout ten or eleven years old my father became very sick so we had to take him to a very good hospital, far away in Indore.
The hospital in Indore was famous all over the country. We had to live there for six months. Just at the entrance of the hospital was a board: ”No Urination Permitted. Anybody Disobeying Will Be Prosecuted.” And there used to stand a policeman. To me that was even more provocative. The board was enough but a policeman with a gun standing there!
The very first day my father entered hospital and we were given quarters in the hospital to live in, I could not resist; it was impossible. The board alone was enough but to put a policeman there with a gun – this was too much. I went directly.
The policeman was standing there; he looked at me. He could not believe it because it had never happened: I pissed!
He said, ”What are you doing? Can’t you read?”
I said, ”I can read – better than you.”
And he said, ”Can’t you see me with this gun?”
I said, ”I can see that too. It is because of your gun and this board – otherwise I had no need.
My house is just a two-minute walk from here, and I have just come from the bathroom. It is really difficult to piss because my bladder is empty. But I cannot avoid the temptation.”
He said, ”You will have to come with me to the chief administrator of the hospital” – it was a big hospital.
So I said, ”Okay, I will come.” I went there. The administrator was very angry.
He said, ”You have just entered – the first day, and you do such a thing?”
I said, ”But what can I do? This policeman was pissing there!”
He said, ”What!”
I said, ”Yes, he was pissing there, and when I saw that a policeman was pissing there I thought perhaps it is absolutely legal, this board is nonsense.”
The policeman said, ”Who says I was pissing? This is absolutely wrong!”
The administrator said, ”This is strange. Let us see.”
What I had done, I had pissed in two places and I showed him those two. The administrator said, "Two places!” He said to the policeman, ”Your services are finished! And that innocent boy – he is not wrong. If you are pissing here ... you are supposed to prevent people.”
I said, ”I saw him, with his gun, pissing here, so I said, ‘Perhaps this is perfectly okay.’ And I am new anyway, I don’t know much.” And the policeman could not deny it; there was no way to deny.
I said, ”If you were not pissing you can deny it, but that simply means that you were not here, you were not on duty; somebody else has pissed. Either way you are finished.”
He was thrown out of his job. When we came out he said, ”Just listen, how did you manage that second place? You know that I was not pissing.”
I said, ”I know, you know, but that does not help. The question is the administrator: he does not know. And you were in every way caught: Either you were not on duty – somebody else has pissed there – or if you were on duty then you had pissed.”
He said, ”How did it happen? Perhaps when we were inside somebody else did it.”
I said, ”To be true to you now that you are finished – you are no longer a policeman and I feel pity for you – I had to do both the things before we left. You were not observant enough to see that I moved two feet.”
He said, ”Yes, I remember. You moved, and I was thinking, Why have you moved? Now I know. But that administrator won’t let me even inside the house; he is a very strict man.”
I said, ”He may be a strict man, but he has become a friend to me” – and he remained a friend to me for six months. I did every kind of thing in that hospital, but whenever I was brought to him, he said, "This boy is innocent. From the very first day I have known this boy is innocent and unnecessarily people are harassing him; for all kinds of things people are harassing him.
”Somebody else does something and he is being caught. And I know the reason: he is innocent, simple, from a small village. He knows nothing about the city and the cunningness of the city and all kinds of ruffians so you go and get hold of him: he has become the target.” And I would stand before him very peacefully.
He remained a friend to me all those six months, just because of that one case in which the policeman was thrown out. But to me it was a simple case of provocation.
God could not see a simple thing? – that to these innocent Adam and Eve He is giving a challenge?
In the uncorrupted souls, utterly innocent, He is putting the seed of corruption. But to save Him the priests have managed to bring the serpent in, and thrown the whole responsibility on the serpent – that he is the sole cause of man’s original fall. But I don’t see him as the original cause. If anything he is the original incentive to man’s growth.
The devil is the original rebel. And what he said to Adam and Eve is the beginning of a true religion, not what God said – that is the beginning of suicide, not religion.
In the East the serpent is worshiped as the wisest animal in the world; and I think that is far better.
If the serpent really did this then he is certainly the wisest animal in the world. He saved man from eternal slavery, ignorance, stupidity.
This is not the original fall, this is the original rise.
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