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.
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