I started writing this post some time back. But I got the impetus to "publish" it after I read this piece by Biswanath Ghosh. In an interesting coincidence Ghosh articulates beautifully a sentiment that I was struggling to. (This time around though one gets the sense that Ghosh was running to beat a deadline, looking at the lack of smoothness in the flow.) Here is the link to Ghosh's piece.
This post was triggered by a comment from my mother in law, Sita, a woman who is endowed
with extremely good looks and an astute mind and a sharp brain to match. If she had been born a couple of decades later society would have let her grow into one of those super achieving bureaucrats – soft-spoken
yet strong, fair and firm at the same time.
You can see
that I am a huge fan of hers. But this
post is not about my mother-in-law.
This post is my
reflection on the comment she made in the context of my repeated reference to a
young woman, in her early twenties, who had captured my imagination and who I keep
wishing had been born to me as a daughter.
My m-i-l opined that I was turning out to be like Jada Bharatan, a character
in the Bhagavatam.
My m-i-l made
the remark on the spur of the moment and apparently in lighter vein. But as I reflected on the remark it appeared
to be remarkably perceptive for more reason than one. In that brief conversation she seemed to have
seen through my emotional wrangle, through my feeble attempt to make light of
the whole matter, through the various banalities with which I tried to
camouflage my true state of the mind.
To set the
context I must start with the story of Jada Bharata. The story appears in the Bhagavatam. King Bharata after
an illustrious spell as an exemplary ruler renounces worldly life in search of
salvation as prescribed in the scriptures.
Close to realization of his spiritual goal he sees a doe being left
behind by its drowning mother.
What starts as
a fulfillment of duty transforms into an emotional attachment, costing Bharata
his spiritual goal. As a result he ends
up assuming the life of a deer in his next birth. Eventually after one more birth as Jada Bharata,
the king attains salvation, but not before he leaves behind a great legacy by
way of one of the most powerful sermons on spiritualism.
The story
meanders along a fair bit, delivering many lofty messages along the way, like a
river leaving behind fertile alluvial deposits.
But that is the not the matter of interest here in this post either.
Instead, the
important point is the close parallel between the story of Jada Bharata and
myself and the more important and relevant among the many ways it differs from that story which
make me write this post.
The affinity
between Jada Bharata and the deer was completely mutual. And this is where the
parallel ceases. Unlike Jada Bharata who
breathed his last pining for the deer, I will never see the object of my
affinity ever again. No matter what
the basis for my affection, if I have to respect the norms of our society,
which I do, the right thing for me to do is to wish my unborn child the best in
her life and keep away from her, leaving her to lead a life uncomplicated by the feelings
of a man who has chosen unilaterally to look upon her as his own offspring.
It is a surreal
experience; but the pain is real. The kind of
sadness that feels like a massive boulder literally weighing down one’s
heart. It must be the kind of pain that
parents feel when children walk out on them in search of a world of their own,
beyond the glow of their (parents’) love.
Will I ever
come out of it? I do not know. If the past is anything to go by the
prognosis is not encouraging. I know I
have not fully come to terms with my mother’s passing seventeen years ago, even
though my memories of her get dimmer by the day. I still experience a strange dull ache when
one of the many past connections, the many mental pegs on which the many dimensions of my relationship with her hang, sets off a chain of recollections about my “child”
I will never get to see again.
And even if I
believe in the Jada Bharata story this is where it ceases to be useful to
predict what will become of me when I leave my "mortal coils". He was
born as a deer as he breathed his last looking at the deer, longing for it. What will happen to someone who is left to pine
in solitude for the object of his affinity that has moved on from his life?
The question is
almost metaphorical as much as the parallel is allegorical. I doubt if anyone will have an answer.
Nanni….Namaskaaram..
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