Kaikeyi

In Ramayana, the great sage Valmiki portrays the characters with vivid colours. He beautifully personifies several human characteristics into a character and makes it alive in the viewers' imaginations. One such character is Kaikeyi, which intrigues me a lot. This character has become a household name in Bharat thanks to the repeated usage of it in literary works as the incarnation of jealousy. There are a good number of interesting aspects in her character that applies to each of us in today's world.

As the story goes, the great king of Solar dynasty, Dasaratha decided to crown his eldest son, Rama as the 'Yuvaraja' - the crown prince. Hastily, Dasaratha decided a day when Bharata, Kaikeyi's only son, was away at his maternal uncles' city, thus unable to attend the event. On the day of coronation, Manthara the head maid-servant at Kaikeyi's palace, counselled Kaikeyi with the evil idea of making Bharata the king and banishing Rama from Ayodhya. Kaikeyi succumbed after some time and by virtue of some promises granted to her by the king, succeeded in getting the wishes fulfilled and thereafter created a place for herself as the 'Lady of Jealousy'. Bharata, for whom Kaikeyi earned the infamy, disowned her and surrendered the kingdom back to Rama.

If we go through the earlier chapters of Ramayana, we don't find any blemish on Kaikeyi's character. She is shown loving Rama more than Bharata. There are references in Ramayana where she tells that Rama being the eldest of all deserves to be loved more. Then what happened that corrupted the mind of such a noble lady?

The very seed of jealousy was planted in her heart by Manthara, her closest aid. Manthara, being a native of Bharata's maternal city had greater affinity for Bharata than for Rama. It is quite natural that a servant would do everything that she thinks would benefit her master, though some short-sighted narrow-minded persons fail to see what their master desires. So upon hearing that Rama would be crowned, Manthara came running to Kaikeyi to inform her and to persuade her to put a blockade in this.

As Manthara came telling that Rama was going to be anointed, Kaikeyi was very happy. She had a pure heart till then which rejoiced when heard good about Rama. Even as Manthara was telling how bad it would be when Rama became the king, Kaikeyi was getting happier every time Manthara was telling - "Rama would be the new king". She was filtering out all the useless talk and was solely absorbed in the pleasure of the good news. This was because Kaikeyi loved Rama whole-hearted. This applies to divine worship also. If we have absolute confidence on the Almighty, we would always see his benevolent love in every situation - good or bad - we pass through.

At the same time, when our trust and confidence on a person goes down, we feel that the person might betray us anytime; and Manthara-like counselling aids to that feeling. When Manthara told Kaikeyi that the king had conspired to keep Bharata out of Ayodhya during the coronation and that Bharata's life was in danger, Kaikeyi had the fear setting in. Many a times we fail to see the actual motive and begin judging based on the perceived situations. Even in case of doubt that can be cleared by active discussion we fail to do so and arrive at hasty conclusions. Kaikeyi being the most adorable wife of Dasaratha could have easily spoken to him, but she instead chose to be persuaded and misguided. We fail to see what wrong we might be doing at the current moment for our sight gets veiled through confusions and mistrust. We many times fall into similar traps only to repent later.

Finally what good did Kaikeyi do? Through her actions, whole of the world disliked her and her own son, for whose sake she was dishonoured, disowned her.

There is also an altogether different viewpoint to this whole episode. Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, was reigning havoc in the world. Everyone was very afraid of him. The gods and the sages, worshiped Lord Vishnu to get rid of him and He assured them that He would kill Ravana when He would be born as the prince of Ayodhya, Rama. Rama being an incarnation in human form had to follow the principles of human life and set precedents as an ideal human being. A situation had to be created where he would be going through the hardships of life creating examples for common people to follow. For this reason, we remember Rama - the "Purusha Uttamam" - when we pass through some hardships and take courage and guidance from Him. For the avataar of Rama to succeed, the purest in heart, the noble queen of Dasaratha, Kaikeyi had to become the instrument to twist Rama's journey through to the forests of Chitrakoota and Panchavati. To save the world, Kaikeyi had to sacrifice all her glory.

Valentine's Day

I woke up yesterday morning to the tunes of the Rangoli on DD National channel. The host started the show announcing that it was the day of love as it was Valentine's day. Then as the show went on, she narrated the 'significance' of the day and what lovers ought to do on this day. As the day progressed, there was more and more of Valentine coming up everywhere - news channels, TV shows, restaurants, gift-stores, shops - literally everywhere. It was as if there was nothing that could stay unmoved by the charm of this day. There were live shows where couples were made out of strangers and there were some where couples were forced to do some crazy stuffs for each other.

During bed-time, after all the Valentine affair, I fell into some sort of contemplation. "What after all is this day about? Is it actually a day for love or there is something more it hides? Is it about people in love or by people who want to gain something else out of it?

I could not recall any celebration of Valentine's day in any time before late 90's. There used to be a saint called Valentine in the 15th century somewhere in Europe and there was some related story saying how he went on to officiate the marriage between two love-struck couples. But he was long forgotten. Sometime in late 90's, during the onset of 'Branding' era, he was suddenly made alive. Actually anything in the name of love can be very easily sold. This I have observed even in Hindi movies also - almost 99% of all movies ever made revolve around the basic theory of love. Thus took birth 'Valentine's day'. It started with greeting cards and accessory gifts. I would give Archies and Hallmarks a lot of credit in immortalizing Valentine. The targeted market was the youth who had the desire and ability to spend in the name of love. The youth in turn reciprocated with competitive buying, each trying to outdo the other lover in the amount of money spent in buying gifts. This love fever was to infect the ascetics too. Those who never had the guts/wish to go after the people from other planet were forced to fall into line saying it was the custom with this day and thus this day started becoming the universal day to propose love (to ...) and with it, for some other ugly affairs also.

The potential of this market was slowly tapped by other industries also. Restaurants making exotic arrangements (and of course at higher prices) for this day, gift-stores luring people to buy more and more expensive gifts (as the competition is very tough out there) and many more. The television media was not be left alone, all TV shows, be it news, reality shows, Saas-bahu serials, got into this. The ever-uncreative news-channels also used this avenue to create stories for quite a good number days. Such elaborate was the coverage of some news-channels that it would leave you with the impression that the world didn't exist outside Valentine's day celebrations.

With such corporate trap, I can hardly see anything beyond Valentine on Feb 14.

Responsibility

Responsibility. It is something that we always try to run away from. Time and again, we boast of being able to do a lot of things. We find a lot of problems and deficiencies in the system. We have a lot of suggestions to put action to. We want things to be done in a different way or rather in our way. But when it comes to get into action, when we are required to implement our own ideas, we try to get away from it. The reason, we are afraid of owning up the responsibility.

If we divide the word responsibility, it would mean the 'ability to respond'. On further thought, we may say it is the 'ability to respond to an event in a positive manner so as to fulfil the expectations caused by it'. So owning up the responsibility of some task would mean to respond to all the requirements till the completion of the task.

But the question still remains, why do we fear to own up the responsibility? One obvious reason to me is the fear of failure. We always have our ego in front of us and it gets badly hurt when we fail and thus we never want to fail. Somehow not to fail is more dearer to us that success itself. We may spend whole our life boasting that we have never failed, only to realize that we have never had the exhilarating experience of success. Another reason would be the unfair criticism from other people who don't take up any responsibility either. There are a bunch of people who would shy away from all their responsibilities, yet won't lose a single instance to demonize a failed case. These I would say are the ones who add to our fear of failure. If in our society every sincere effort is appreciated, no matter whether it bears fruit or not, people would be less reluctant to own up responsibility.

If we are not the actor, let us not be the head-less critic also. Let's be responsible.