Pause for "pause"

Greetings,

There is a gruesome story that I had heard in my childhood. The story goes like this -

A village household has been blessed with a baby boy. Apart from the proud father & mother there is a pet mongoose (arch rival of the cobra / snakes) which is a part of the family. One day, while the father is working on farm, mother has to go out for some household chore. She goes away with full confidence that, the mongoose would save her baby from any harm. But to her horror, she returns to see the mongoose sitting at the doorstep with blood stained mouth and claws. The first thought that crosses her mind is - mongoose has killed their only son! With this seeming breach of trust, the grief-struck mother kills the mongoose with a stone from the street. As she rushes in the house, she is shocked to see her dear son sleeping calmly and a venomous cobra lying dead nearby. She immediately understands her 'misunderstanding' but alas - the act can not be reversed. There is nothing left for her to do but repent on her foolish thoughtless action.

Even though the story paints grotesque pictures, the picture it paints is that of a folly that influences us humans time and again. We too opine immediately - stamp every incident, event, news, action, sentence, word, thought or person as 'good' or 'bad' - without even a single moment's consideration! This hits most specially when we look at our life and ideas of success. What is life? Is it just the time that passes between two events viz. birth of our physical body and its death! What if this was not the case? What sort of foolish and thoughtless things we would do if we had such a myopic view of life?

Let's look at the same story sanitized and presented in today's parlance!

She had a tough day in the office. 'What a pathetic bunch of losers we have in this madhouse called the office! Why does this always happen with me? All this also might have been bearable, if only my man had some understanding. But here we have Mr. Male Ego personified at home. I don't even want to look at his face when I go back, specially after last night's spat. I hope he has some pathetic office party to attend today...' - Her chain of thoughts was somewhere here, as she stopped in her tracks in front of the flat's door when she was about to take out the key from her purse. What made her pause was the sound of her husband, she strained her ears and could catch phrases such as "... love you so much..., ... can't really... , ...you mean the world.., .. my love..." Now, anger flaring up in her heart, she started peeping through the key-hole to see what exactly is going on. She could only see her husband's face partially, he seemed to try to convince someone of his love! 'See his spunk! In our own house, he is confessing his love to someone else.... ' With boiling wrath, she opened the door and in a single sweep hurled her right sandal at him, shooting him with choicest curses to top it off! As she opened her eyes to see the full scene, she was embarrassed to the tip of her toe in her left sandal, that was still left in her left foot. Mr. Hubby was practicing the dialogues that he wanted to say to 'her', in front of the mirror - which now reflected a man clutching his head with his hands!

Do you see what we don't see? Let's try to see the full scene. Let's try to see the life as it is. Let's try to see the light as it is and not get entangled in the darkness which is not there! In fact, what is darkness but lack of light? What is coldness, but lack of warmth? Darkness is not 'something' that is opposite of light. Cold is not something which is enemy of 'heat'; it is just the lack of heat that we term as cold.

Before taking any decision. Pause. See if you have seen everything there is to be seen. Try seeing what we don't see! Seeing is believing`? Nah! See it fully before you even think of believing it partially...

Sincerely Mine!
Anand P Kulkarni