As I sat by
a window to watch a drama of a festival being played on the streets of Mumbai,
my heart reached out to unlock the prison of the human mind with the key of
repentance. In spite of the Supreme Court order stating that the human pyramids
for the Dahi Handi must not exceed twenty feet and children under eighteen
should not participate in their formation and mandals must procure safety gear
for their govindas, some handi revellers flouted the said order and continued
to celebrate the festival in their own fashion. Pyramids did reach above twenty
feet, children below eighteen did participate and basic safety gears were
shunned. So, I looked up at the sky and wondered that if all was hell down on
this earth, could it be that the heavens were empty. And then a smile rose to my
face when I heard a whisper assuring me that to recognize an error and correct
its direction was the only way to bring the lost to the light of truth.
Janmastami,
the festival celebrating the birth of Krishna, whose main objective on the
planet is believed to have been to get rid of all kinds of evil, has I feel
lost its focus and become a festival to be celebrated by a majority of
dangerous fun seekers.
Though Krishna
took birth as master centuries ago, his reincarnation appears to be happening
every day. Every character in the story of this spiritual king symbolizes
different aspects of our human body. It is said that his mother Devaki, symbolizes the body and his father Vasudev, the life-force of the Holy Spirit. And
so it is understood that when the life-force of the Holy Spirit enters the body,
it turns life into Joy and full of Love.
However, it isn’t as easy as it
appears. Devaki’s brother, Kamsa who symbolizes ego is always the biggest
adversary of Joy and Love.
Krishna is
often referred to as the ‘Butter-Thief’. Now what I understand from here is
that though milk is the essence of nourishment of knowledge, it is only when
this knowledge is churned to become light like curd, sans the ego, that it can
help man to cross the oceans of strife without getting drowned. When Vasudeva
carries Krishna over his head to cross the ocean, it could be for us to
understand that our head which is the storage center of the ego has to be kept
under the weight of Love for a smooth journey in the storms of life.
The irony of
today’s man is that he is unable to conquer his ego and instead allows his
greed to rule him; transforming the beautiful message of this celebration of
the birth of Joy, which could bring waves of happiness to touch our hearts,
into a Tsunami of destruction and pain; disgustingly transforming it into one
of injuries.
“He is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit
who leads into all truth. The world at large cannot receive him, for it isn’t
looking for him and doesn’t recognize him.” John 14:17
When the
pyramid of the human body suffers a spiritual fall, the security of his heart
behind the rib cage gets shattered due to cracked ribs, his broken limbs fail
to lead him in the right direction and his fractured skull exposes his
otherwise sheltered mind to the evils of the world.
What is
interesting is that such accidents can easily be avoided, but the charm of the
spiritual understanding of the festival gets covered up by commercialisation,
politicisation and hooliganism which have made it into a big time event in the
city of Mumbai. The prizes scaling up to eleven lakhs and above are obviously political
offers to many pyramids of vote banks.
It is not
difficult to observe this festival symbolizing great spiritual wisdom, sprayed
with communal colours. Inevitably there are clashes between rival mandals which
lend an appearance of an uncouth sport rather than a celebration of the glory
of the Spirit.
However,
when some minds like those of the courts of law and order try to save those who
have been exposed to the degrading drop of their original beauty and purpose of
life, the egoistic politics snub the righteous courts of disrespecting the
religious sentiments of people and blame them of interfering in traditions
because according to them all have knowledge of the essential matter and a
little action packed fun would surely not cause any harm.
Some
fractured bodies which then fail to understand right from wrong, get
dangerously exposed to the lotteries of the senses. Soon greed of the ego
successfully overshadows the need of the Spirit.
If only we
could understand that the two buildings from which the rope is tied to hold the
butter pot are the two paths of life; the path of righteousness and the path of
evil, what a saving grace it would be to our intelligence. How simple it would
be for man to easily walk straight towards righteousness leaving the evil
behind! Instead how wastefully he climbs the pyramid of his greedy ego and
falls to everlasting death. As the first century philosopher Lucius Seneca
would say, “...we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully”.
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