Posted:
It was another wonderful epi which showed the debate between Ram and Jabali. Jabali knew the young prince would come to him. Jabali also knew a person who is empathetic cannot miss certain things in Ayodhya and those things will raise question in him.
And of course Ram asks the valid questions. If king needs to keep a distance, why it is not applicable to Brahmins and traders. Why the distance only with the poor. Jabali replies it is because king wants the Brahmins and traders to show the prosperity of his kingdom. They are his success stories, whereas poor are his failures. People are poor, suffering because somewhere the administration has failed them. And no king wants to face failures.
And to ensure such failures are not shown to the king controls in the name of rules are kept. You cannot question king because he is like God. You cannot question your parents because they are God. So everything non questionable is given a God like authority, God like aura to ensure the power structure.
And I have to agree to Jabali. Questioning is so much discouraged in our culture. We cannot question parents, we cannot question elders, we cannot question teachers and it is so ingrained in the child's mind that even when questions need to be asked they hesitate to ask. Instead of asking questions they will find ways to circumvent the rules, do things what they want behind the back of the parents, teacher, society while keeping a sanskaari front face. And many times such people are encouraged by good people in the name of family ties, relations etc..
Even today there are woman who tell Panchali shouldn't have questioned in the infamous hall of dice. Even today many believe it was her question that led to the war. When someone question the power structure it is labeled as intolerance. When someone questions an unethical practice they are called rebels.
Anybody who had known me from DABH forum would know how much I have written about this lack of questioning by the protoganists both male lead and female lead to the MIL is the major drawback of the show. The worship like aura given to Bhabo who commits many a mistake and leads justifying those mistakes and incidentally the leads are called Ram-Sita. So lack of questioning is directed to the great epic. And this is what I had been telling misinterpretation of Ramayan in the society to subjudicate the good.
And what did we see today. We saw a questioning Ram. But not as a rebel. But the one who needs answers. He is not challenging, he is trying to understand. Understand the fault lines. Why people are so much afraid of failure. Because failure teaches you a lot. Failure does help you to become a better person. But alas our ego doesn't allow us to face failure. Hence it loves the illusion and uses control so that we are not faced with our failures.
When we have an oppourtunity to learn from our kids, we deny us that opportunity. We believe after certain age we become so knowledgeable we don't need additional knowledge. We stop the process of learning and continue to live in the past glory, while the world moves on.
We have to encourage questioning. Great discoveries and inventions were born from the question. When apple fell on Newton's head he questioned why it fell. We got laws of motion and gravity. Edison did more than 100 experiments before he found the right element for electric bulb. Each failure made them search more. And their search helped humanity a lot.
And we have to look at Ram. Yes the youngster is worried but when Jabali says relations doesn't matter, you have to be self sufficient, the youngster says relations do matter. There is a beauty in them. You have to respect them. Ram is trying to strike a balance between his thoughts and his beliefs. He is not blindly rejecting anything, neither blindly accepting something. The rational mind works, questions and tries to arrive at answers. And that is what is making him different. The questions and the ability to ask the questions the right way.
