“Every coin has two faces” they say and indeed it does. A couple of days rewind, and I got to see a positive side of the 2 inches long tobacco stuffed stick a.k.a cigarette. The statuary warning that come along had kept me away from it till date and will continue to do so; but I was pleased to see what a bonding a cig can enforce between two individuals. These two puff buddies seemed to have entwined their lives into one another’s; and their bonhomie pushed me to this next blog of mine, if not pushing me into joining them to smoke my life out.
As a child we have always been chanted to look at things in a positive way and as we clock more miles on our age track the chanting haven’t ceased.
But often do I think, do all things that look good are indeed noble? And for those matters are all things that are projected to us in negatives shades equally evil? For the things we take on face value need not be the same that they depict they are. A right hand as seen in the mirror is the left one; and equally true is the other way round.
What better example to take then our own epics. Thanks to the evangelism of Mr. Ramanand sagar and latter Mr. Sanjay Khan; and even more thanks to the non-advent of remote control and cable television that prevented me from flipping between frequencies, my adolescence years were sprayed with constant and daily doses of the mythological sagas. Be it the “Maryada-purshottam”ism of Lord Rama in the Ramayana or be the “Kaurav-Pandav” duel in the Mahabharat. Ofcourse, then there were “The sword of Tipu-Sultan”, “Prithviraj Chauvan”, “Jesus”, “Jai Hanuman”, “Gautam Buddha” and finitely numerous many.
I might be charged of blasphemy but still I prefer to stick to the Hindu mythics involving the Rama, the Kauravs and the pandavas.
So, one could briefly summarize the Ramayan as the story of lord Rama, an incarnation of the lord Vishnu, known for his portrayal of a idealistic man and his victory over the ten headed devil Ravana. No one will challenge my brief summary above, but as it’s said the devil lies in the details. Let’s start with the villain in the story, the devil as it might be doubly reinforced by the possession of 10 heads. But this devil Ravana, a son of a sage, was a devout Shiv worshipper and had performed ages of worship and the very not so human trait of possession of ten heads was a result of his offering of head that many number of times to please the almighty lord Shiva. Finally blessed by Shiva, he was gifted by the eternal source of power the “Lingam” which was snatched from Ravana in not so very fair manner by the rest of the gods anticipating abuse of it by him. Moving from the villain to the hero of the mythological saga, The lord Rama. Was it right on his part to seek “agni-pariksha” to verify the sanctity of his better half; the very lady who readily boarded on a 15 years exile in wilderness resigning to all the cosy comforts of the flourishing kingdom? Was this act befitting to the tag of Maryada-purshottam?
Moving from the one epic to even a more voluminous epic. The epic whose theme was set around the battle of Kurukshetra. Draupadi was mentioned to have taunted Duryodhan about his father’s blindness which angered him and led to her “vastraharan” and the entire Mahabharat followed suit. The shade of grey that characterized the skin tone of Lord Krishna, also seem to have seeped into his character too; for that throughout the entire length of the epic he was involved in some sleight or the other. Even though Pandavas being depicted as the positive characters, didn’t hold them from playing the sleight and tricks that Lord Krishna suggested. Though Kauravas, or the supposedly the evil force, did play the game strictly by the rules; the Pandavas seem to bending the rules time and again. Be it the eclipsing of Sun by Krishna, or be it the Ashwathama incident. Be it the foul Killing of Karn when he was down of his chariot, to the tactful and equally foul killing of duryodhan.
By all this, I don’t intend to malign any of the holy lords neither do I want to indulge into profanation of the holy sages that were scripted by Vyas and others. The whole point of this blog is to inculcate in oneself a viewpoint of looking at things in a totally unpartisan and in an unbiased manner devoid of any sorts of prejudice.
Disclaimer: I am a devout Hindu and proud to be one. I have full faith and belief in the scriptures and the epics that have transcended down through generation. Through my write-up above, I do not intend to malign or belittle in any way the hindu mythological figures as depicted in the mythic. For that matter, I could have picked any other religion/epic to drive my point across. Be it the “Jehad” in Islam or the “Divinity of Jesus” in Christianity; but I choose to cite examples from my very own religion for the sake of not being labelled “communal” by the self-proclaimed “seculars”.
