Lockdown period can be productive if one has
the flair for reading and writing. Of course there are times when even this
gets tiresome and we seek desperately other sources of diversion to fill the
long summer days imprisoned within the
four walls. I have also experienced a similar degree of ennui and weariness
with books and computers – the main tools we all have- to stay in touch with
the world beyond our mental borders. It was a serendipitous discovery as I
flipped the 24x7 Corona news channels to Star plus to find a repeat telecast of
the Mahabharata of the 2013
production. I had seen it earlier and therefore I had decided to skip viewing
it a second time. But since the news
channels ceaselessly churn out the daily depressing dose of CV news about its spike, the lack of hospital
beds , the increase in positive cases and mortality rates, besides the fearsome
predictions of a gargantuan peak in the next few weeks, I had no option but to vacuously indulge in channel surfing when
I stumbled on the Mahabharata serial
and saw the episode featuring Bhishma’s surrender to Krishna
which is a part of Bhishma parva that
narrates the first ten days of war.
Bhishma,
stung to the quick by Duryodhana’s accusations of not keeping his vow to be loyal
to the throne of Hastinapur which was then with the Kauravas, pledges to
annihilate the Pandavas. He enters the battle field the next morning and is at
his ferocious best slaughtering all who dared to confront him. Finding Arjuna
hesitant to raise his bow against the family patriarch, Krishna gets angry and descends from his chariot to confront and kill Bhishma contrary to his vow not to wield arms
during the war. Bhishma is taken aback to see an angry Krishna. Bhishma who had prided himself of having
lived a blemishless life of self denial and rectitude, strictly adhering to his
twin vows of celibacy and loyalty to whosoever who sat on the throne of
Hastinapur, asks Krishna as to where he had erred to incur Krishna’s wrath.
Krishna
accuses Bhishma for his failure to be on the side of Dharma because for
Bhishma, adherence to his vows was as his sole dharma. Bhishma had failed to
intervene in the injustices done to the Pandavas and more so to Draupadi when
the Kauravas attempted to disrobe her. He was a mute spectator to all the evil
games played by the Kauravas, but because of his vow of loyalty to the
Kauravas, he had remained silent. In keeping with his vow, he had entered the
fight on the side of the Kauravas even when he knew that Pandavas stood for
Dharma.
Bhishma privileged his own dharma above Universal
Dharma which essentially signifies right conduct in keeping with Rta or the cosmic Law that benefits
society and mankind. Krishna reveals to Bhishma that all his actions to serve
the Kauravas were unethical and had resulted in the establishment of adharma personified in Duryodana and his
band of Kauravas.
This episode involving Bhishma and Krishna is illustrative of the
perennial conflict between individual dharma and the Universal Dharma where the
pride and ego of adherence to one’s
personal conscience often conflicts with moral conscience that upholds the
larger interest of humanity. The conflict between id, ego and Superego is inherent in all human beings. Id functioning on pleasure principle caters
to our base ideas and urges, while Superego
operates as our moral conscience and seeks to direct our activities to a higher
spiritual ideal what we refer to as Dharma.
Our behaviour and conduct have to be in keeping with Dharma which follows Ṛta,
the order that makes life and universe possible, and that includes duties,
rights, laws, conduct, virtues and "right way of living". Ego
is the one that mediates between id and
Superego. Bhishma’s privileging his personal vow (dharma) however noble it
was over universal Dharma is egoistic and unethical. As Krishna unfolds the
unethicality of Bhishma’s actions- which he justifies as keeping to his
personal vow,- Bhishma realizes the futility and ineffectiveness of his vows
and seeks forgiveness from Lord Krishna. Since
Bhishma had been given the boon of immortality unless he wills his
death, he expresses his desire to atone
for his wrongs at the hands of
Shikandini. On his deathbed he bestows his blessings on the Pandavas for their
victory as they were the upholders of Dharma
Coincidentally on the day I watched this episode of Krishna and
Bhishma, I was engaged in writing an analysis of Tennyson’s poem, Ulysses written nearly two centuries ago(1833). This has been
my favourite poem of Tennyson as it represented the Victorian conflict between
an artist’s love of art for art’s sake and his duty to use art in the service
of humanity. Ulysses, the great hero of the Iliad,
next only to Achilles, returns home to ascend the throne as the King of Ithaca.
But soon after he becomes restless as his thirst for new voyages, new
discoveries and new knowledge overpowers him and he decides to abdicate his
throne in favour of his son Telemachus and s out on his quest saying
“ I cannot rest
from travel: I will drink/ Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd /Greatly,
have suffer'd greatly, both with those/ That loved me, and alone,”... and proceeds “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to
yield.”. He abandons his duty by his people as he seeks fresh knowledge and
fresh discoveries.
This sums up the perennial dilemma within all
of us- should we live to satisfy our personal desires or live to serve fellow
beings. To seek knowledge and to satisfy the personal urge to expand ones
knowledge horizon is not wrong, but can
that alone be the meaning of one’s existence? Isn’t it a kind of indulgence on
the part of the artist in satisfying his love for self expression? Can he use his art to rejuvenate mankind? Can
we find meaning by making our life useful to our fellow humanity! Overarching these questions is the larger question as to how to
reconcile the two as both are required and both need each other.
These Lockdown days seem endless
as there is no specific action to be done at any specific time( the exception
being those who are mandated to WFH(work from home) and complete the task
assigned to them before they call it a day).
For others the lockdown days stretch beyond sunset and sometimes well
into the early hours of night. Days and hours seem long and provide golden
opportunity to reflect on life- a luxury of timelessness that CV has gifted us.
Even as the reader looks askance
at my placing Bhishma on par with Ulysses, I brought them on the same platform
as I found them sharing the conflict of personal satisfaction as against
dedicating their talents to serve ‘ others’. This dilemma between I and the
‘other’is a perennial one –a dilemma
everyone of us shares with every other
person- how to live an ethical life with a focus on self alongside a life of
altruism , a life dedicated to the service of fellow beings. It is easy to
accept, though difficult to put in practice what our Hindu scriptures say- to
lead our individual life worthy of the gift bestowed on each one of us by our
Creator with a focussed goal to attain personal salvation through total
surrender to the Lord. The merger of the self with the Self has to be the final
goal.
But somewhere this concept of
personal salvation as the ultimate goal intrigues me as its focus is on me and
my individual self. It does not
accommodate the ‘others’ who have been a part of my life from my birth.
Everyone knows the one and the only
certainty that I am born, I exist, and one day I shall cease to exist, This
life is the one and only life that we
know as we have no knowledge of
what went before and what shall come hereafter. What we pack into life
gives the meaning of our existence. Hence for everyone, the meaning we pack
between birth and death is of our own volition, a conscious choice we make. And
what we do will have to factor in, its effect on others around. To questions
who am I, why was I born, what is the purpose of my life and where do I go- to
the five ‘W’s of who, what, why, when and where, no one has answer. To find a
meaning for life then becomes our vocation.
The Lockdown period has given me
ample time to dwell on questions that had been put on the backburner in the
hurly burly days of mundane activities. The daily chase to be one up on the ‘others’ had been the driving
impetus all through these years. My life, my achievement, my success, my
happiness have been the overarching compulsions
to give meaning to my existence. In this selfish pursuit of happiness, there
is no place for the other. We share the animal instincts similar to the force
behind all animal movements. In our personal life, it is as though we were
following the Keynesian economic theory that encouraged animal spirits in Man,
unleashing our basic instincts, proclivities
and emotions to influence and guide our human behaviour. We have been living
like animals in pursuit of mindless happiness and self satisfaction. We had
almost forgotten what is happiness because we were constantly chasing
happiness. The Corona Virus has
flattened the social and economic
curves and has shown how we all share
the vulnerability of life
Watching the Mahabharata and listening to Krishna’s message to
Draupadi settled the conflict within me. Krishna foresees the tragedy that
awaited Draupadi as all her children would be the victims of this war. She had
earlier vowed to avenge the attempted destruction of her honour but as she
apprehended the ensuing tragedy where she would
be called upon to sacrifice her children, she tells Krishna that she would rather
withdraw her vow than face a colossal tragedy. Krishna’s advice to Draupadi not
to rescind her fight for justice even at the cost of personal sacrifice helped
me to reconcile the dilemma of I and the
other. My passion, my commitment, my choice of ethical action for the upholding
of justice and fairness is a blending of I and the other. In the bargain, if it demands personal
sacrifice, I should have the courage to face it.
Well
my reflections helped me to get rid of a binary approach to ‘I and the other’
as both are the two given fixed determinates
and they exist only because of their interdependence. ‘I’ cannot remain
in isolation. ‘I ‘ cannot be happy if all around ‘I’, others are unhappy. It is
true vice versa. A community or a society is made up of many ‘’I’s and its
happiness depends on the wellbeing of all its ‘I’s. What is important is the
need to focus upon ethical conduct that is conducive for the well being of all
the ‘I’s that constitute a community
Lockdown has its own gifts to
bestow. It has given us time- time to retrospect, time to introspect, time for
hindsight, time for foresight, time to look back, time to look forward, time
for I and time for the other. I recalled Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner where the old Mariner lay cooped inside his ship that had got stranded.
He had inadvertently killed the albatross in a sudden moment of violence and
despair.
Beyond
the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
The self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
My
dilemma that hung like the albatross fell the moment I accepted the others as
myself. Like the Ancient Mariner, I blessed the Corona Virus unaware.
Lockdown period can be productive if one has
the flair for reading and writing. Of course there are times when even this
gets tiresome and we seek desperately other sources of diversion to fill the
long summer days imprisoned within the
four walls. I have also experienced a similar degree of ennui and weariness
with books and computers – the main tools we all have- to stay in touch with
the world beyond our mental borders. It was a serendipitous discovery as I
flipped the 24x7 Corona news channels to Star plus to find a repeat telecast of
the Mahabharata of the 2013
production. I had seen it earlier and therefore I had decided to skip viewing
it a second time. But since the news
channels ceaselessly churn out the daily depressing dose of CV news about its spike, the lack of hospital
beds , the increase in positive cases and mortality rates, besides the fearsome
predictions of a gargantuan peak in the next few weeks, I had no option
but to vacuously indulge in channel
surfing when I stumbled on the Mahabharata
serial and saw the episode featuring Bhishma’s surrender to Krishna
which is a part of Bhishma parva that
narrates the first ten days of war.
Bhishma,
stung to the quick by Duryodhana’s accusations of not keeping his vow to be
loyal to the throne of Hastinapur which was then with the Kauravas, pledges to
annihilate the Pandavas. He enters the battle field the next morning and is at
his ferocious best slaughtering all who dared to confront him. Finding Arjuna
hesitant to raise his bow against the family patriarch, Krishna gets angry and descends from his chariot to confront and kill Bhishma contrary to his vow not to wield arms
during the war. Bhishma is taken aback to see an angry Krishna. Bhishma who had prided himself of having
lived a blemishless life of self denial and rectitude, strictly adhering to his
twin vows of celibacy and loyalty to whosoever who sat on the throne of
Hastinapur, asks Krishna as to where he had erred to incur Krishna’s wrath.
Krishna
accuses Bhishma for his failure to be on the side of Dharma because for Bhishma,
adherence to his vows was as his sole dharma. Bhishma had failed to intervene
in the injustices done to the Pandavas and more so to Draupadi when the
Kauravas attempted to disrobe her. He was a mute spectator to all the evil
games played by the Kauravas, but because of his vow of loyalty to the
Kauravas, he had remained silent. In keeping with his vow, he had entered the
fight on the side of the Kauravas even when he knew that Pandavas stood for
Dharma.
Bhishma privileged his own dharma above Universal Dharma
which essentially signifies right conduct in keeping with Rta or the cosmic Law that benefits society and mankind. Krishna
reveals to Bhishma that all his actions to serve the Kauravas were unethical
and had resulted in the establishment of adharma
personified in Duryodana and his band of Kauravas.
This episode involving Bhishma and Krishna is illustrative of the
perennial conflict between individual dharma and the Universal Dharma where the
pride and ego of adherence to one’s
personal conscience often conflicts with moral conscience that upholds the
larger interest of humanity. The conflict between id, ego and Superego is inherent in all human beings. Id functioning on pleasure principle
caters to our base ideas and urges, while Superego
operates as our moral conscience and seeks to direct our activities to a higher
spiritual ideal what we refer to as Dharma.
Our behaviour and conduct have to be in keeping with Dharma which follows Ṛta,
the order that makes life and universe possible, and that includes duties,
rights, laws, conduct, virtues and "right way of living". Ego
is the one that mediates between id and
Superego. Bhishma’s privileging his personal vow (dharma) however noble it
was over universal Dharma is egoistic and unethical. As Krishna unfolds the
unethicality of Bhishma’s actions- which he justifies as keeping to his
personal vow,- Bhishma realizes the futility and ineffectiveness of his vows
and seeks forgiveness from Lord Krishna. Since
Bhishma had been given the boon of immortality unless he wills his
death, he expresses his desire to atone
for his wrongs at the hands of
Shikandini. On his deathbed he bestows his blessings on the Pandavas for their
victory as they were the upholders of Dharma
Coincidentally on the day I watched this episode of Krishna and
Bhishma, I was engaged in writing an analysis of Tennyson’s poem, Ulysses written nearly two centuries ago(1833). This has been
my favourite poem of Tennyson as it represented the Victorian conflict between
an artist’s love of art for art’s sake and his duty to use art in the service
of humanity. Ulysses, the great hero of the Iliad,
next only to Achilles, returns home to ascend the throne as the King of Ithaca.
But soon after he becomes restless as his thirst for new voyages, new discoveries
and new knowledge overpowers him and he decides to abdicate his throne in
favour of his son Telemachus and s out on his quest saying
“ I cannot rest
from travel: I will drink/ Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd /Greatly,
have suffer'd greatly, both with those/ That loved me, and alone,”... and proceeds “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to
yield.”. He abandons his duty by his people as he seeks fresh knowledge and
fresh discoveries.
This sums up the perennial dilemma within all
of us- should we live to satisfy our personal desires or live to serve fellow
beings. To seek knowledge and to satisfy the personal urge to expand ones
knowledge horizon is not wrong, but can
that alone be the meaning of one’s existence? Isn’t it a kind of indulgence on
the part of the artist in satisfying his love for self expression? Can he use his art to rejuvenate mankind? Can
we find meaning by making our life useful to our fellow humanity! Overarching these questions is the larger question as to how to
reconcile the two as both are required and both need each other.
These Lockdown days seem endless
as there is no specific action to be done at any specific time( the exception
being those who are mandated to WFH(work from home) and complete the task
assigned to them before they call it a day).
For others the lockdown days stretch beyond sunset and sometimes well
into the early hours of night. Days and hours seem long and provide golden
opportunity to reflect on life- a luxury of timelessness that CV has gifted us.
Even as the reader looks askance
at my placing Bhishma on par with Ulysses, I brought them on the same platform
as I found them sharing the conflict of personal satisfaction as against
dedicating their talents to serve ‘ others’. This dilemma between I and the
‘other’is a perennial one –a dilemma
everyone of us shares with every other
person- how to live an ethical life with a focus on self alongside a life of
altruism , a life dedicated to the service of fellow beings. It is easy to
accept, though difficult to put in practice what our Hindu scriptures say- to
lead our individual life worthy of the gift bestowed on each one of us by our
Creator with a focussed goal to attain personal salvation through total
surrender to the Lord. The merger of the self with the Self has to be the final
goal.
But somewhere this concept of
personal salvation as the ultimate goal intrigues me as its focus is on me and
my individual self. It does not
accommodate the ‘others’ who have been a part of my life from my birth.
Everyone knows the one and the only
certainty that I am born, I exist, and one day I shall cease to exist, This
life is the one and only life that we
know as we have no knowledge of
what went before and what shall come hereafter. What we pack into life
gives the meaning of our existence. Hence for everyone, the meaning we pack
between birth and death is of our own volition, a conscious choice we make. And
what we do will have to factor in, its effect on others around. To questions
who am I, why was I born, what is the purpose of my life and where do I go- to
the five ‘W’s of who, what, why, when and where, no one has answer. To find a
meaning for life then becomes our vocation.
The Lockdown period has given me
ample time to dwell on questions that had been put on the backburner in the
hurly burly days of mundane activities. The daily chase to be one up on the ‘others’ had been the driving
impetus all through these years. My life, my achievement, my success, my
happiness have been the overarching compulsions
to give meaning to my existence. In this selfish pursuit of happiness,
there is no place for the other. We share the animal instincts similar to the
force behind all animal movements. In our personal life, it is as though we
were following the Keynesian economic theory that encouraged animal spirits in
Man, unleashing our basic instincts,
proclivities and emotions to influence and guide our human behaviour. We have
been living like animals in pursuit of mindless happiness and self
satisfaction. We had almost forgotten what is happiness because we were
constantly chasing happiness. The Corona
Virus has flattened the social and
economic curves and has shown how
we all share the vulnerability of life
Watching the Mahabharata and listening to Krishna’s message to
Draupadi settled the conflict within me. Krishna foresees the tragedy that
awaited Draupadi as all her children would be the victims of this war. She had
earlier vowed to avenge the attempted destruction of her honour but as she apprehended
the ensuing tragedy where she would be
called upon to sacrifice her children,
she tells Krishna that she would rather withdraw her vow than face a
colossal tragedy. Krishna’s advice to Draupadi not to rescind her fight for
justice even at the cost of personal sacrifice helped me to reconcile the
dilemma of I and the other. My passion,
my commitment, my choice of ethical action for the upholding of justice and
fairness is a blending of I and the other.
In the bargain, if it demands personal sacrifice, I should have the
courage to face it.
Well
my reflections helped me to get rid of a binary approach to ‘I and the other’
as both are the two given fixed determinates
and they exist only because of their interdependence. ‘I’ cannot remain
in isolation. ‘I ‘ cannot be happy if all around ‘I’, others are unhappy. It is
true vice versa. A community or a society is made up of many ‘’I’s and its
happiness depends on the wellbeing of all its ‘I’s. What is important is the
need to focus upon ethical conduct that is conducive for the well being of all
the ‘I’s that constitute a community
Lockdown has its own gifts to
bestow. It has given us time- time to retrospect, time to introspect, time for
hindsight, time for foresight, time to look back, time to look forward, time
for I and time for the other. I recalled Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner where the old Mariner lay cooped inside his ship that had got stranded.
He had inadvertently killed the albatross in a sudden moment of violence and
despair.
Beyond
the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
The self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
My
dilemma that hung like the albatross fell the moment I accepted the others as
myself. Like the Ancient Mariner, I blessed the Corona Virus unaware.
Lockdown
period can be productive if one has the flair for reading and writing. Of
course there are times when even this gets tiresome and we seek desperately
other sources of diversion to fill the long summer days imprisoned within four walls. I have also experienced a similar
degree of ennui and weariness with books and computers – the main tools we all
have- to stay in touch with the world beyond our mental borders. It was a
serendipitous discovery as I flipped the 24x7 Corona news channels to Star plus
to find a repeat telecast of the Mahabharata
of the 2013 production. I had seen it earlier and therefore I had decided to
skip viewing it a second time. But since the news channels ceaselessly churn out the
daily depressing dose of CV news about
its spike, the lack of hospital beds , the increase in positive cases and
mortality rates, besides the fearsome predictions of a gargantuan peak in the
next few weeks, I had no option but to
vacuously indulge in channel surfing when I stumbled on the Mahabharata serial and saw the episode featuring Bhishma’s surrender to Krishna which
is a part of Bhishma parva that
narrates the first ten days of war.
Bhishma,
stung to the quick by Duryodhana’s accusations of not keeping his vow to be
loyal to the throne of Hastinapur which was then with the Kauravas, pledges to
annihilate the Pandavas. He enters the battle field the next morning and is at
his ferocious best slaughtering all who dared to confront him. Finding Arjuna
hesitant to raise his bow against the family patriarch, Krishna gets angry and descends from his chariot to confront and kill Bhishma contrary to his vow not to wield arms
during the war. Bhishma is taken aback to see an angry Krishna. Bhishma who had prided himself of having lived
a blemishless life of self denial and rectitude, strictly adhering to his twin
vows of celibacy and loyalty to whosoever who sat on the throne of Hastinapur, asks
Krishna as to where he had erred to incur Krishna’s wrath.
Krishna
accuses Bhishma for his failure to be on the side of Dharma because for
Bhishma, adherence to his vows was as his sole dharma. Bhishma had failed to
intervene in the injustices done to the Pandavas and more so to Draupadi when
the Kauravas attempted to disrobe her. He was a mute spectator to all the evil
games played by the Kauravas, but because of his vow of loyalty to the
Kauravas, he had remained silent. In keeping with his vow, he had entered the
fight on the side of the Kauravas even when he knew that he had pledged his
loyalty to the adharmic forces.
Bhishma privileged his own dharma above Universal
Dharma which essentially signifies right conduct in keeping with Rta or the cosmic Law that benefits
society and mankind. Krishna reveals to Bhishma that all his actions to serve
the Kauravas were unethical and had resulted in the establishment of adharma personified in Duryodana and his
band of Kauravas.
This episode involving Bhishma and Krishna is illustrative of the
perennial conflict between individual dharma and the Universal Dharma where the
pride and ego of adherence to one’s
personal conscience often conflicts with moral conscience that upholds the
larger interest of humanity. The conflict between id, ego and Superego is inherent in all human beings. Id functioning on pleasure principle
caters to our base ideas and urges, while Superego
operates as our moral conscience and seeks to direct our activities to a higher
spiritual ideal what we refer to as Dharma.
Our behaviour and conduct have to be in keeping with Dharma which follows Ṛta,
the order that makes life and universe possible, and that includes duties,
rights, laws, conduct, virtues and "right way of living". Ego
is the one that mediates between id and
Superego. Bhishma’s privileging his personal vow (dharma) however noble it
was over universal Dharma is egoistic and unethical. As Krishna unfolds the
unethicality of Bhishma’s actions- which he justifies as keeping to his
personal vow,- Bhishma realizes the folly and
egocentricity of his vows and seeks forgiveness from Lord Krishna. Since
Bhishma had been given the boon of immortality unless he wills his death, he expresses his desire to atone for his
wrongs by willing his death at the hands
of Shikandini. On his deathbed he bestows his blessings on the Pandavas for
their victory as they were the upholders of Dharma
Coincidentally on the day I watched this episode of Krishna and
Bhishma, I was engaged in writing an analysis of Tennyson’s poem, Ulysses written nearly two centuries ago(1833). This has been
my favourite poem of Tennyson as it represented the Victorian conflict between
an artist’s love of art for art’s sake and his duty to use art in the service
of humanity. Ulysses, the great hero of the Iliad,
next only to Achilles, returns home to ascend the throne as the King of Ithaca.
But soon after he becomes restless as his thirst for new voyages, new
discoveries and new knowledge overpowers him and he decides to abdicate his
throne in favour of his son Telemachus and s out on his quest saying
“ I cannot rest
from travel: I will drink/ Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd /Greatly,
have suffer'd greatly, both with those/ That loved me, and alone,”... and proceeds “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to
yield.”. He abandons his duty by his people as he seeks fresh knowledge and
fresh discoveries.
This sums up the perennial dilemma within all
of us- should we live to satisfy our personal desires or live to serve fellow
beings. To seek knowledge and to satisfy the personal urge to expand ones
knowledge horizon is not wrong, but can
that alone be the meaning of one’s existence? Isn’t it a kind of indulgence on
the part of the artist in satisfying his love for self expression? Can he use his art to rejuvenate mankind? Can
we find meaning by making our life useful to our fellow humanity! Overarching these questions is the larger question as to how to
reconcile the two as both are required and both need each other.
These Lockdown days seem endless
as there is no specific action to be done at any specific time( the exception
being those who are mandated to WFH(work from home) and complete the task
assigned to them before they call it a day).
For others the lockdown days stretch beyond sunset and sometimes well
into the early hours of night. Days and hours seem long and provide golden
opportunity to reflect on life- a luxury of timelessness that CV has gifted us.
Even as the reader looks askance
at my placing Bhishma on par with Ulysses, I brought them on the same platform
as I found them sharing the conflict of personal satisfaction as against
dedicating their talents to serve ‘ others’. This dilemma between I and the ‘other’is
a perennial one –a dilemma everyone of
us shares with every other person- how
to live an ethical life with a focus on self alongside a life of altruism , a
life dedicated to the service of fellow beings. It is easy to accept, though
difficult to put in practice what our Hindu scriptures say- to lead our
individual life worthy of the gift bestowed on each one of us by our Creator
with a focussed goal to attain personal salvation through total surrender to
the Lord. The merger of the self with the Self has to be the final goal.
But somewhere this concept of
personal salvation as the ultimate goal intrigues me as its focus is on me and
my individual self. It does not
accommodate the ‘others’ who have been a part of my life from my birth. Everyone
knows the one and the only certainty
that I am born, I exist, and one day I shall cease to exist, This life is the
one and only life that we know as we
have no knowledge of what went before
and what shall come hereafter. What we pack into life gives the meaning of our
existence. Hence for everyone, the meaning we pack between birth and death is
of our own volition, a conscious choice we make. And what we do will have to
factor in, its effect on others around. To questions who am I, why was I born,
what is the purpose of my life and where do I go- to the five ‘W’s of who, what,
why, when and where, no one has answer. To find a meaning for life then becomes
our vocation.
The Lockdown period has given me
ample time to dwell on questions that had been put on the backburner in the
hurly burly days of mundane activities. The daily chase to be one up on the ‘others’ had been the driving
impetus all through these years. My life, my achievement, my success, my
happiness have been the overarching compulsions
to give meaning to my existence. In this selfish pursuit of happiness, there
is no place for the other. We share the animal instincts similar to the force
behind all animal movements. In our personal life, it is as though we were
following the Keynesian economic theory that encouraged animal spirits in Man,
unleashing our basic instincts, proclivities
and emotions to influence and guide our human behaviour. We have been living
like animals in pursuit of mindless happiness and self satisfaction. We had
almost forgotten what is happiness because we were constantly chasing
happiness. The Corona Virus has
flattened the social and economic
curves and has shown how we all share
the vulnerability of life
Watching the Mahabharata and listening to Krishna’s message to
Draupadi settled the conflict within me. Krishna foresees the tragedy that
awaited Draupadi as all her children would be the victims of this war. She had
earlier vowed to avenge the attempted destruction of her honour but as she apprehended
the ensuing tragedy where she would be
called upon to sacrifice her children, she tells Krishna that she would rather
withdraw her vow than face a colossal tragedy. Krishna’s advice to Draupadi not
to rescind her fight for justice even at the cost of personal sacrifice helped
me to reconcile the dilemma of I and the
other. My passion, my commitment, my choice of ethical action for the upholding
of justice and fairness is a blending of I and the other. In the bargain, if it demands personal
sacrifice, I should have the courage to face it.
Well
my reflections helped me to get rid of a binary approach to ‘I and the other’
as both are the two given fixed determinates
and they exist only because of their interdependence. ‘I’ cannot remain
in isolation. ‘I ‘ cannot be happy if all around ‘I’, others are unhappy. It is
true vice versa. A community or a society is made up of many ‘’I’s and its
happiness depends on the wellbeing of all its ‘I’s. What is important is the
need to focus upon ethical conduct that is conducive for the well being of all
the ‘I’s that constitute a community
Lockdown has its own gifts to
bestow. It has given us time- time to retrospect, time to introspect, time for
hindsight, time for foresight, time to look back, time to look forward, time
for I and time for the other. I recalled Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
where the old Mariner lay cooped inside his ship that had got stranded. He had inadvertently
killed the albatross in a sudden moment of violence and despair.
Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
The self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
My
dilemma that hung like the albatross fell the moment I accepted the others as
myself. Like the Ancient Mariner, I blessed the Corona Virus unaware.
