Sunday, October 21, 2007

Dussehra time!!

Happy Dussehra!! I can shamelessly admit, I am a sucker for festivals. I love them! Festivals of any religion...any geography and absolutely any motivation get me smiling. There is a spark in the air, strangers smile warmly when crossing each other...everyone is dressed up in their fineries...there is a certain magic around these occasions that you and I can't really explain.

And the mother of all festivals in India has to be the Dussehra-Diwali month! I was crossing a Ramlila ground last night and they were getting all ready for the famous Ravana burning act. And it got me thinking....the story of Ravana as told in India makes us see things in black and white. There is no scope for grey. He was evil. Ram was good. Good kills evil. End of story. But I see contemporary India moving away from this school of thought. I see us questioning things. What motivated Ravana to act like he did? Was he justified in doing so? Was he really all that evil?

JK Rowling got Dumbledore to say a very thought provoking statement in one of the books. Dumbledore told Harry - "There is no good or evil. All of us have a little evil in us. It is our choice which voice we choose to act on."

This is the grey that we recognise today. All of us have skeletons in the closet....some words said, some acts done that we wish in retrospect that we had not. But that doesn't make us evil. We can choose to bury them and select a different path...and the beauty of this moment in time is that there is a chance we will not be crucified for our thoughts and we won't be burned in full glory to signify the victory of good over evil....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

well said... ravan was a very literate man and a very accomplished warrior and a just king. if one belives that he cudn't cross a 'line' marked by sita to assault her one has to be quite naive or just someone who doesn't like to question and hence someone stuck in the rote mode of religion... he respected Sita enuff to let her be n didn't cause her harm - the only mistake being his kidnapping of her - that too only for the intention of luring the enemy to come fight him -for he felt enraged that his sister was assaulted... but teaching our children that its ok to burn effigies of people and celebrating that is not something i think i'd like to pass onto future generations...there r other ways to celebrate victory of so called 'good over evil'

Popular Posts