What makes Rama so great?

Ramayan is the timeless epic and the very name means the journey of Rama. The journey of Rama becomes so impactful because fundamentally his journey based itself on two legs – Satya and Dharma. I just want to highlight few points in Rama’s life where he has gone against the easier options to make sure Satya/Dharma are held upright.

1)      Episode of Viswamitra: -  Rama did not hesitate a second to follow Sage Viswamitra, just because his father asked him to do so. He did not complain that he is being asked to sleep on the rock/sand/mud floors as opposed to his usual routine of sleeping in well-made and well-maintained princely bed rooms. He did not hesitate a second to kill demon Thataki. He mentions to Viswamitra that because my father asked me to follow you and do anything you say, I am killing this demon. Period.

2)      Marriage with Sita:- As Rama broke the Holy bow of Lord Siva, it is evident that he is eligible to get married to Sita. King Janaka offered Sita to Rama, which is not easy to say no given beauty of Princess Sita. Rama showed immense maturity at that tender age by saying to King Janaka, that matter as significant as his marriage is a decision of his father and not his own.

3)      Episode of relinquishing throne:- This is a tough one. As the eldest son of the king Dasaradha, he would have known subconsciously that he is to become the king one day. Now when all of a sudden, his fortunes deceive him and he is asked not only to relinquish the throne but also asked to leave the kingdom to hardships of forest. Rama maintained his composure in that situation and followed the instructions of his father without any hue and cry. This is the defining moment of Ramayan.

4)      Episode of Bharata:- Bharata, the son of Kaika, gave an irresistible option to Rama to comeback to kingdom. Rama politely refused it stating that he cannot go back on his word. This situation he has successfully conquered the temptation of riches offered by Bharata by sticking to his path.

5)      Making Ravan as enemy:- Rama has shown his confidence by choosing to fight with Ravan. Ravan is a seasoned warrior and has an acclaim of defeated even the Gods, but that did not invoke any fear in Rama.

6)      Making Sugreeva as friend:- Rama is cognizant of the fact that Sugriva is himself in doldrums and if he chooses Vali as his friend his search of Sita would be easy. But he stood by Sugreeva and not by Vali as Vali is not in path of Dharma.

7)      Agnipravesh:- To me this is the toughest test Rama has faced in his life. Even today people find fault with Rama. I found one of the best interpretations in “Ramayana Kalpavriksham” by Telugu Poet Viswanatha Satyanarayana Garu. As per the poet, the test is not for Sita, it is a test for Rama himself. He is facing a challenge that is two-fold- one if he chooses to accept Sita without proving her purity, future generation might find fault with Sita. Secondly if he subjects her to the test, the future generation will admonish him. So he chose the option that will hold Sita upright at the risk he being ridiculed. Thus giving a chance for every tom, dick and harry to criticize him, who is a perfect individual all through his life. 

Memories

I still remember going over the pictures of my childhood over and over again while growing and then as an adult. I made sure to show them to my friends while in college. Then when I got married I have shown them to my wife. Then comes my daughter and I have shown them as well. In all there are at most 20 pictures of my childhood that are stored as memories. Obviously as it is only 20 pictures, people enthusiastically went over them every time I showed them.

Then there were two dozen pictures of us visiting Hampi and Warangal. As the camera reel is limited, my father made sure all the important aspects of architecture were covered and of course me and my sister got equal (or nearly equal) chance of getting into the picture. We stored them as sweet memories. Whenever I take a glance at the album, it brings me back the architecture of Vijayanagaram and Kakatiya empires in front of my eyes.

Now comes ubiquitous mobile cameras and other digital photography, combined with madness of social networking. We started capturing everything just for the heck of it. Sometimes in a rat race just to use the picture as an excuse to post in social network when we really have got nothing to say. Pictures which served as memories, stopped being so when we started capturing everything we do. 

We see a dozen pictures posted on social network of people eating out and the dishes they chose to eat. I cannot really understand why “eating” is a memory, for a person who eats 3 meals a day. I can understand if the person comes from country like Somalia where eating 3 meals a day a luxury.

We get hundreds of likes and comments from friends. I don’t want to sound sexist but the truth is fairer sex gets more likes. I see people uploading 100 pictures in one go and honestly I feel bored after looking at 4^th or 5^th pic. I seriously wonder if the persons who liked and commented on the album, have really taken all the time to see them or just responding as Social Network courtesy.

Then comes Selfies. Oh my God, I am not exaggerating if I say that there are people who take 100 selfies in a day. I wonder if selfies have taken away business from mirror manufacturers. While it is not a bad idea to record how I looked like at a specific point in time, I feel it is an overkill if we try to record how I looked like at every point in time. Result? May be Gigabytes and Petabytes of pictures produced every year and giving business to BigData technologies.

One other thing with selfies is people making faces while taking them. Twisted mouth, slanted face, funny expressions. My grandmother innocently asked if the person has a twisted mouth while looking at someone’s selfie.

But frankly, in this huge dump of pictures, if I really wanted to extract a specific memory how difficult it is going to be?  Technology made it easy to capture memories. However, with inappropriate usage of technology we are creating more junk and thus making it difficult to mine good memories from huge pile of data.