TiruppAvai-flavored sundara-kaandam - Part 3: pOginrArai pOghAmal kaathu....

[Guest guest]

Dear friends,

 

Although everyone of the 7 great cantos of Srimadh

Valmiki Ramayanam is by itself a masterpiece of

poetry, philosophy and theology, still it is the

"sundara-kaandam" that is considered by scriptural

experts and laity alike to be 'primus inter pares':

the First among Equals.

 

None of us can have any quarrel with that assessment

since it is in the 'sundara-kaandam' that Valmiki is

at his absolute best while depicting that great and

deepest, most profound and most prevalent of human

emotions -- Despair.

 

What is Despair? Is it an emotion -- like anger, fear

or jealousy -- that briefly seizes a man in particular

situations and then disappears by itself when the

situation gets corrected? Or is it a more fundamental

human condition? A basic, unalterable infirmity of the

human mind or psyche? An affliction of the soul?

 

The dictionary meaning of the word Despair is "utter

loss of hope in life". It is from this defintion of

despair that the old commonplace quip came to be

coined: "Where there is Hope there is Life", the

logical corollary of which is, of course, "Where is no

Hope there is only Despair". Given that all mortal

life on earth ultimately meets with its final

crushing, inevitble end, can it not be therefore

asked:

 

"What is Hope? Is there anything at all like real Hope

in mortal Life?"

 

Such a question, we find, is the central concern of

the modern school of philosophy called

"Existentialism". It is a profoundly despairing one

and yet such a compelling one too that every man and

woman of the modern post-industrial age has to

confront and must come to terms with in life, no

matter what.

 

The story of the "sundara-kaandam" in the Srimadh

Valmiki Ramayana, in fact, deals precisely with such a

profoundly Existential question.

 

******************

(to be continued)

 

Regards,

daasan,

Sudarshan MK

 

Warm Regards,

Sudarshan

 

" A life is perhaps worth nothing; but nothing certainly is worth as much as life".

(Andre Malraux)

 

 

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