Random Thoughts

The other side of happiness

by Ranjita Biswas | @twfindia 18 Oct 2023, 12:54 pm

The monsoon is on its last legs, the blue sky and white waves of kaash flowers now send the message that our beloved festival, Durga Puja, is round the corner. A time for  celebration indeed. But old-timers are frowning a little unhappily too. Ma this time is coming to earth on the vahan of ghotok - horse, and going back to her heavenly abode on horseback too. This indicates a time of conflicts and war.

Whether you believe in these age-old legends based on scriptures or not- the puja rituals follow scriptures anyway, it does not need overemphasizing that we are truly living in a time when war, internecine conflicts, hate-fuelled killings seem to have become a daily affair. Peace, what is that?

Going by the scriptures again, according to Hindu cosmology, we are living in kaliyug- when evil rules over good, variously described as  ‘the age of darkness’, ‘the age of vice and misery’ or ‘the age of quarrel and hypocrisy.’

The word yug stands for ‘Era’ or ‘Time Cycle.’ In Hindu astronomy a yug is a unit of time consisting of five solar years. The cycle of evil kaliyug will end when a day will come that the sins would overwhelm mother earth and it would portend an end  by the destruction of human kind. And then from the ashes would emerge the Satyayug,  a time of good people, of truth and beauty.

These conjectures of time’s cycles and philosophies thereof belong to the he realm of probability or esoteric discussions. Who knows when all this will end? But one thing is for sure, we are definitely living in evil times. The good things that humankind produces, the scientific advances making it possible to soft-land on the moon, researchers  discovering new treatments for the sick, rapid discovery of  a vaccine to fight  a sudden pandemic, writers and painters at their creative best– all these seem to sit lightly on the scale while the negative forces  overwhelmingly tilt the axis. Otherwise, how can a sane mind imagine babies having their throats slit as an act of revenge, disgruntled young students emptying bullets on fellow students, so-called lovers maiming women with acid thrown on the face? Did we ever think we’d see parents approaching the court in our so-called god-fearing, ‘tradition of respect for elders’, society for being evicted from home by their own children?

The list of horrors can go on.

So even amidst the festive air, your eyes well up at the plight of innocent victims of mindless terrorism, children going without food and water, and so on. You pray desperately to see a flight of white pigeons bringing a message of peace.

While offering anjali to the mother goddess on the auspicious days, a prayer for the suffering would surely go along with the chanting of rupang dehi, jayam dehi, yasho dehi- please grant me spiritual beauty, victory and glory and please destroy my (inner) enemies.

We belong to one world. How can we be blissfully happy and self-absorbed when so many people are suffering across many borders?

So we pray, O mother goddess, please bless this hapless world with peace!