“Piya Tora Kaisa Abhimaan!!!”
This one line of song from the movie ‘Raincoat’ has been lingering in my mind and heart since I heard it after a long time last night. There is so much pity, misery, helplessness, despair, pain in this one line. Love can, at times, really be such a depressing feeling!
Love in its purest form, I have been told, is all about giving. True lover gives up everything for his love, sacrifices all his happiness and pleasures for one smile of his love. In all other give-and-take affairs, it’s the receiver who is being humbled and giver takes all the pride. But here, we see a lover in his purest form bending to his knees, but that doesn’t budge the spine of the rude loved one even a radian. And still, the lover goes on; and the loved sticks to his ego, his false ego!
While love is all that concerns for the lover, the loved one, here, puts this significance to his ego. Goals differ; ideals, priorities mismatch, and you have such miserable situation. What a pity it is to lose something as ever-lasting like love for something as ephemeral as ego!
As I ponder over this gloomy song, I am reminded of a story of a pundit and a scorpion that I had read in my childhood. It must be from Panchtantra – they used to make such interesting and meaningful stories, I owe a lot of my ideals and principles to them. Story goes this way – a pundit was taking a bath in river, and he saw a scorpion getting swept away in the water current. Taking pity on the poor animal, pundit picked it up and started moving towards river-bank to take the scorpion safely out of water. However immediately the scorpion stung pundit with it’s tail. Pundit felt the pain running all through his body, he almost fell in the river, and scorpion fell off his hands and again began drowning with the river current. Pundit immediately gathered himself, and again picked up the scorpion and started moving towards safety of river-bank. However again, scorpion stung pundit, pundit felt immense pain, and scorpion fell off in river, pundit again picked it up. This picking up, stinging, falling off and picking up again went on for some time, and finally pundit managed to get the scorpion to the safety of land. An onlooker was watching this from bank, and said to pundit – “you are really a stupid man. Its dharma of scorpion to sting, and yet you kept on picking it up”. To this, pundit replied – “if that small animal cannot let go his dharma, how can I – a human being – let go mine. That animal was dying, and it was my dharma to save it”.
Doing what is one supposed to do when all is hunky-dory is no fun, is no great deal. It is when things go against you, it is when all your goodwill, noble thoughts, selfless help goes unnoticed, unappreciated and unanswered; that you need to continue being good. True test is do what is your dharma when everything practical around you suggest that it is stupidity to continue. In the last book I read – “Games Indians Play”, there is a quote from Bhagwad Gita which goes like this – “You have right only to your actions, and not to their results!” Nothing can be more true!
Blessed is the person who loves selflessly. Love is too precious to be put at stake for one’s ego. Love is said to transcend all boundaries, and so often I have seen it faltering at boundary of false egos. So often, people play the “who-blinks-first” game and stake their love, their friendship on the outcome. Not to lose in this game, their eyes are always wide open, but even with these wide-open-eyes, they miss seeing the obvious truth that love is far far more precious than these false egos. By the time their open eyes and closed brains realize this, often it is too late. It becomes too late to blink and make up. It becomes too late to go back and erase everything, and start afresh. It simply becomes to too late to set it correct. It is simply lost, forever!
5 seconds of this song tells you all this, in the most hard-hitting manner… “Piya Tora Kaisa Abhimaan!”
Nicely written
Thanks Rohit.