Curse of Sita

Curse of Sita 

Personally, I do not believe in the periodic stories of Curses. There is an opinion that Ayodhya is not flourishing as a religious destination as Vrindavan Mathura and Haridwar because it suffers from the curse of not only Sita but Kaushalya and other palace women of that time. 

After a lot of prayers and Yagnyas the queens were blessed with sons. Kaushalya's Rama was taken away as a teenager by Vishwamitra. After winning Sita in a Swayamber, he was exiled for 14 years. Having lived difficult life, Sita's kidnapping, Ravana's killing, Rama returns home but had to abandon  Sita even after she had passed the chastity test. 

No one talks about Urmila's owes when her husband Lakshman leaves her behind to serve Rama and Sita. No one talks about Mandavi when her husband Bharat leaves her and settles in Nandigram for all those 14 years. 

Grandmothers of those days would sing- kowu samjhawat nai (No one is understanding or trying to make understand).

It was not only the curse of Sita and Kaushalya but Urmila, Mandavi and whole women kind. 

Ayodhya which was Saket once saw so many upheavals. It was looted by Mughals, Babri Masjid built over the ruins of Ram Temple. The British almost destroyed it in the mutiny of 1857. 

Now Ram Temple is being built after demolishing Babri Masjid. There will be a temple in the name of Rama but Sita will only be seen as a statue inside the sanctorium. Will her curse still linger?

Let us pray that the curse of Sita and Kaushalya does not harm Ayodhya any further. 

Amen. 

What could I do?

What could I do? Hapless-Helpless Humans. 

If learning morals was the guarantee of putting in practice what was learned, we would have saints inhabiting this planet. That was the purpose was learning in the first place, isn't it?

The first thing we were made to sing in the school assembly was 

"He Prabhu Anand data gyan hamko deejiye"( God! of Bliss, bestow knowledge upon us). 

Another one was 

"wah shakti hame do dayanidhe kartavya marg par dat jayen" (Give us the strength, O!! God of Kindness, we may stand on the path of duty). 

The prayers went on praying for truthfulness, good behavior, free from sins, and all those virtues that all humans aspire to. Similar prayers might have been sung in schools all over India. The prayers were a daily routine up to high school as far as I remember. More than 10 years of praying.

Since then most of us have read volumes of the material of these virtues and every day we are flooded with still more on social media. If that was not enough we are surrounded by god-men and god women, spiritual leaders, not forgetting our daily trips to the places of worship.

How come that learning has not been a part of our practice? Why could we not practice what we learned?

Neither the prayer nor the subsequent learning could make us good human beings. 

There is no clear answer. Maybe we were not meant to be good human beings in the first place. Those who composed the prayer and penned subsequent learning material did so after a lot of experience and introspection. 

If so, they must have done so after crossing the prime of life and realized the mistakes they committed and wanted to tell the young generation or anybody who cared to read or listen and not to commit similar mistakes. 

On the hind side, maybe I am writing this piece as I too have crossed the prime.  

The fact is we all are good people. Circumstances make us bad. And this is a good excuse, an escape route. 

"What could I do?"- becomes the buzzword.