I love my parents dearly and they also love me dearly but one day, when they will die, I will be left alone and heartbroken. Then why did God create such relationships? How can a great thing as love be treated so cheap?
No one is permanently related to anyone in this world. All connections with a particular family, community or a nation are merely a temporary relationship. An Indian may not be born again as an Indian after death. One cannot be sure of getting even a human birth. Hence, the scriptures say that one should live just like a guest – atithivat, in his home and always remain focused on the actual goal of life, spiritual emancipation.
It is a common scene in Haridwara that the pilgrims standing on the banks of the river Ganges set afloat small lamps as water passes down in the river. These floating lamps come together in the river’s current. When in an opposite current, the waves toss these lamps this way and that (sroto vegena), and they become dispersed or drowned. Similarly, all living beings, by the inexorable speed of time (kala vegena) are brought together by the waves of material nature and they form relationships with one another as family, community or nation. At death, all types of relationships become terminated by the same time factor.
Hence, the following verse (11.28.9) of the Shrimad Bhagavatam suggests that we cultivate a sense of indifference to worldly attractions:
A cinema star playing the main lead character in a film has a father, mother, wife, children, and so on, played by other actors in that film. But when this one particular star plays the main lead in a hundred films, he may have different co-stars playing the roles of parents, wife and others. Similarly, a person who has parents, wife, children, in his current life may have different persons as wife, children and other relatives in his next life. Thus, one may have millions of fathers, mothers, wives, children and so on during his transmigratory sojourn in this material universe.
Therefore, nobody is permanently related to anyone here. Actually, everyone is merely playing a particular role assigned to him or her, as if in a stage play, by the dictates of Maya. God is the producer (creator) of this world whereas Maya, the material energy, is the director, and the conditioned living beings are the actors. To understand this, one requires true intelligence.