Absolute Freedom

As a kid I had learnt story of ‘Sharavan Kumar’, who took upon his task to fulfill the desire of his parents of teerth yatra. I was quite curious back then over how was it that he was carrying them and the picture given to me was something like this, he made baskets for them to sit in and placed them at the end of a long stick.

It was undoubtedly a smart plan, but I soon realized that the deeper meaning behind this portrayal apart from showing a son’s love for his parents was the inter-dependence of his parents. Since if any of them had died, the construction of shravan kumar would have failed him. The whole idea was behind an assumption that either they both travel, or they don’t, hence either they both live or both die.

This idea of inter-dependence is not unknown to the world even now, we all seek out the one on whom we can depend, and hence we hardly see anyone absolutely self-dependent. The end result of this is the fact that no-body is in reality free; we are all bound by our reliance on someone. We have intertwined our co-existence to such a level that even if we sit and decide that we don’t want to rely on the other person any more, that we want to break this unspoken deal of mutual give and take, we cannot, we have bound ourselves to it at a much farther level, it is much like a contract that you cannot get out off. Thus we continue to live as we were, afraid or too lazy to take the steps that were proper, we deem that path as improper by calling it a selfish path, by damning it so that we dare not think about it, so our heart dare not venture on the grounds of freedom. We seek console in others, we seek sanction of our ideas, of our doings from others, and we strive hard to be accepted by others. But we chose to ignore it; we chose to not give it any recognition and continue to embark on this path to mire. We bring ourselves to such a destitute existence that we scorn when we look at children leading a free life, devoid of a need of sanction from anyone. When I say destitute, I mean we lose our morals or rather we bend it in so many ways that they are incomprehensible in any manner, we stand and seek eyes that approve of our standing, who acknowledge our presence, and we leave our mind hungry for the reality but instead all we provide it is a fake sense of it, calling it the reality of life. We adopt and live by the principle of 'Laugh at others but dare not evaluate your own life'. We chose the scales to measure others by, but dare not measure our own self with the same. We chose to be hypocrites and calling ourselves the only sane one around.

Ever since I read that famed legend of Shravan Kumar, I had a troubling feeling that the story is trying to tell us something which we are choosing to ignore. Every time I heard of the story, I did not think about the sacrifice and the love of a son, but I continued to be troubled over something that I could not see. But now its like I realize why was the idea of his parents being carried in baskets, balancing each other was something that irked me so much.

It is not asked of us to live a free life, but it is a level to which we as humans should try and live up to. We humans have brought ourselves so far, we have made the improbable possible with the power of our brains, only to stand dependent on others? We have the power of producing and dealing with others with our own efforts and not beg or receive from others as alms. I feel disgusted now by the idea of seeking sanction of my doings from someone, of having my presence and my ideas acknowledged. It is a long and a fearful journey to be free, and as it said no freedom is ever achieved without a revolution. It is a revolution that we have to fight with our own self to be free, free from the binds of our own need of dependence.