Lord Vishnu - is he jobless?

A phone conversation with tatayya ended in a discussion about the avatara purusha - Lord Vishnu. I would like to warn the readers (if any :-)) that these views are definitely just one way of looking at the truth. It doesn't even once claim to be set in stone. So, please save your knives!

I wanted to talk to him about my reading on dasavataras (the 10 incarnations of Lord Vishnu). Tatayya asked me, "What do you think all these avataras were?" I presumed it wasn't a trick question and hence went about with, "Every once in a while the world would reach a point where a visionary direction was required, either to save it from near extinction or to restore social equanimity. The living beings on the Earth would need for The Higher Being (read God) to take over. Lord Vishnu, the care-taker of the world, then decides that he needs to descend and assume a form which was appropriate for the situation." I rattled off easily and was proud at how well I could put it out.

Tatayya then asked me, "In short, you say that the goal of an avatara is to bring the world back to a perfect state. Am I right?".”Of course", I said eagerly. "Now", he continued, "The creation itself was conceived by this so called higher being or God. Would you agree with that?" I reluctantly agreed. He then went on, "If that is so, how many times does it take for this Supreme Being to create one perfect world which would never go bad? How many times does he have to correct his own creation, his own so called puppets which go the wrong way? Isn't it strange? It almost seems like God is playing a game with us or he is extremely bored and with nothing else to do, going about creating and correcting repeatedly. Do you think Lord Vishnu is jobless?"

I was appalled at this argument of his! What is tatayya saying, I thought. Then, he said, "This itself is a proof that all this is unreal. This very existence is a mere fiction of our own imagination. And only when we truly realize that this nothing and the only truth is that peerless Existence, would we become one with it. In fact the realization would be that we are nothing but that very Supreme Being and nothing else!"

Rest of the phone conversation petered into mundane discussions, but, this particular topic remained fresh in my mind, hours after I finished the call. Yet another thought provoking conversation, it had been...