Scriptures : A little parable

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Near the wind-swept beaches of Kanya Kumari lived an ageing & pious

widow who had two wonderful & loving sons - Ram & Shyam. They were

both devoted to their gentle mother who had single-handedly raised

them up to be men of distinction and character. Ram, being the elder

one took up the responsibility of taking care of his mother, while

Shyam left for the faraway city of New Delhi in search of a job.

All the while he was in Delhi, he was pining for his beloved mother

and was waiting eagerly for the year-end when he could take a month's

leave and journey to the southern tip of India to be with his mother.

Finally the day arrived for his journey. With a little tote bag

containing a few articles of clothing, he took a bus from his residence

in the outskirts of Delhi to the railway station. At the railway

station, he boarded the KK express bound for Trivandrum. The train

journey, which was supposed to have taken him two days & three nights,

was disrupted due to some technical reasons when it reached a small

unknown station in Madhya Pradesh. With a few fellow travellers,

Shyam managed to share a taxi, which took four hours and a few hundred

rupees to take him to Bhopal. From Bhopal he had to take three

connection trains to finally arrive at Trivandrum. The journey till

Trivandrum took him almost four days and to make matters worse he

had to spend most of it standing in the packed un-reserved compartment

of the trains. In short it was a nightmarish experience for the

novice Shyam. From Trivandrum, he took the bus, which would finally

deposit him at the doorstep of his little home in Kanya Kumari.

At the gate he saw his ageing mother standing in the verandah. In a

flash all his fatigue and irritability vanished. He threw away his

tote bag, jumped out of his sandals, and ran barefoot the short distance

between the gate and the verandah. His heart sang as he swooped up his

beloved mother, hugged her, and kissed her, while his brother watched

amusingly. "Do you know what a tough time I had to reach here? The

trials, the many trains I had to catch…," he said as he tried to catch

his breath. Turning to Ram he then added, "You are so lucky, my dear

brother."

To which Ram replied with a smile, "But I never went away, my Shamu!"

The scriptures and the other holy books are like the different vehicles

Shyam had to take to get him to his home and his beloved. While for Ram

he never needed any of those for he never "went away". In the last phase

of Shyam's journey, he threw away all the "excess baggage" (the tote bag,

sandals) that was only slowing him down. Also, the bliss he felt when

he caught sight of his mother immediately vaporised all the weariness of

his arduous journey.

Each of us in this "homeward journey to the beloved", experiences many

obstacles on the way. But in the final phase, once we "set our eyes

on the beloved" all memories of our arduous journey are forgotten in

a trice and we lie intoxicated in the blissfulness of the experience,

in the love radiating from the Beloved.

 

Thank you

 

Hari Kumar

 

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