Sunday, April 27, 2014

THE SCIENCE OF FRIENDSHIP IS BEING REWRITTEN



Off late I have a habit of regularly watching (addiction would be a more suitable word) a serial based on Mahabharata. Barring the grandiosity and the tailored characters who act in it, I started to admire the way in which the great sage Veda Vyasa has scripted the story or how he has adeptly captured all the essence required to lead a successful life.

Apart from Krishna’s teaching in Mahabharata and obvious lessons learnt from Duryodhana’s wrong doings. I found a not so famous comparison lesson on friendship. I found that even today the comparison is fresh for us to apply with our friends.

Disclaimer: The views written below are purely from the blogger’s point of view and not intended to hurt any friends or friendship directly or indirectly.

So let me start of the comparison. There were two kinds of friendship in Mahabharata, one was Krishna-Arjuna, and the other was Duryodhana-Karna. Though we have heard a lot about these duos, I found a strange connection between the friendship in the epic and what happens today.

To start off with let us take Duryodhana-Karna, they were no less than one of the greatest friends we have seen. Karna wanted to follow the path of dharma and he also wished if his friend would ever follow the same path. But he could do very little to make his friend follow the path that he wished to travel. He did try to advice Duryodhana on many occasions but he was tangled by nuances of friendship which he was never able to break considering what Duryodhana has done to him when the whole world criticized him.

We can’t say that Karna wasn’t good enough to direct Duryodhana  in the path of righteousness but the latter was very much adamant in his way of doing things and the result was obvious, Karna’s efforts went futile and at the end their friendship died along with them. The moral of this friendship is very simple, both of them had a huge amount of love and respect for each other but when one of the two wasn’t reciprocating what the other was doing the end wasn’t far for them.

On the other hand, the hero duo were a picture perfect example of friendship. Arjuna listened to Krishna. Whenever Krishna said what Arjuna was doing was wrong he corrected himself and  when Arjuna refused to do his duties Krishna threatened to break his promises for him which kindled Arjuna to again do his duties. Here they had a mutual respect for each other, Arjuna didn’t want Krishna to break his promises and Krishna was utmost interested in fulfilling Arjuna’s vows. They both shared a relationship beyond one’s ego and comfort zones. Sometimes they blindly believed that what other was doing was to correct him and every time they were proved right.

Disclaimer 2- This second part of the blog is purely fictional and the characters are a part of blogger’s imagination and any resemblance to any person dead or alive is purely coincidental.

There were two friends namely Javagal and Pratap Singh. They were indeed good friends and shared a great rapport between them. But one day Javagal started to follow a path which was not good for him. So Pratap asked Javagal not to do it, it wasn’t not because he didn’t like it , but was also because he has seen or heard from people of great stature of what happened to people who travelled in that path. But Javagal didn’t seem to understand or pretended so. He had always said or questioned who said or where is it written, but never really understood that the answer for who and where was Pratap himself. But nevertheless Javagal was still a great friend to Pratap but refused to listen to his friend on these issues. On the other side, something was throbbing Pratap from inside on what he has to do to get back his friend to the right path.

Here we see a great relationship between Duryodhana-Karna and Javagal-Pratap. They both gave each other a great amount of freedom to share each other’s happiness and sorrows but they refused to correct themselves on hearing from their friend. They forgot to understand that correction of friendship and oneself is perpetual process. That it is the science of friendship.

I don’t understand the fact that how you can give rights to someone for questioning you on everything expect on something which you aren’t comfortable with. In fact there would be 100 people to do what you like but you will have only one person that is your friend to do what you don’t like and to tell you the right things.

We see these things happening in friendship nowadays, all friends share huge respect for each other but reserve them on questioning the others personal views. That formula would suit for everyone around, but it shouldn’t be applied to our friends too, because we are not born with the knowledge of everything and we need someone to guide us when we are wrong and that someone is no one other than our friend.

One, the Javagal-Pratap Singh relationship is going to meet an end like Duryodhana-Karna or correct itself and become like Krishna-Arjuna. The science of friendship written by Krishna-Arjuna combo is rewritten to follow Duryodhana-Karna which of course is not a strong example to follow. We should allow and listen to select few of our friends to give an insight when we go wrong and have an open mind to correct ourselves. After all our friends are the ones who always care for our well-being in this monstrous world by being a family away from our own family.

P.S-Though Pratap Singh is in the place of Karna he refuses to do what Karna did and always looks to being a one of Krishna-Arjuna duo.