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Once upon a time, a worm went
for a walk in a forest. It was spring time and the trees were in bloom. Bees
and butterflies sported among the blossoms, which also concealed cooing koels. In this idyllic setting the worm suddenly came upon a musth-maddened
elephant. "Harrumph!" With a snort, the elephant blasted the little worm out
of his way.
Just then a giant serpent
emerged from behind the pachyderm. Unlike the worm, he was in no mood to
yield his right of way. As the elephant raised his foot to crush the snake,
the King Cobra slithered aside to skin his fangs into the elephant's flank.
Just then, our little worm warrior, who had landed on the jumbo's back, sank
his jaws into the animal's skin.
The elephant had no choice
but to keel over and give up the ghost with a vast whoosh. This was sweet
music to the scavengers nearby. But the jackals loping towards the carcass
were brought up short by the sight of the little worm preening over the
elephant like a rajah with his foot planted on his trophy.
"Now how did your majesty, the Meanderer,
bring such a mighty one so low ?" asked an old jackal sarcastically. "Oh it
was nothing really; I bit him," the worm replied, adding an after thought:
"Along with elder brother Nagappa." That is the credit-snatcher's proverbial
mantra in Kannada: Naanu mattu Nagappa. (I and Nagappa.) It may elicit a
smile. But it also has a cheeky spiritual aside and that is, to succeed, you
must enlist Big Brother on your side. Not the Orwellian elder sibling. but
the Big Feller who's all pervasive.
That's precisely what Arjuna did on the
battlefield of Kurukshetra, both literally and metaphorically. "You may have
the entire Yadava army," he told Duryodhana. "I want only Krishna."
In doing
so, Arjuna was only following Krishna's immortal advice from the final
stanzas of the Bhagvad Gita: "Drop your conceit and ego. (Although)
performing all your actions, but ever fixed in me as refuge, you shall reach
immutable bliss (sarva-karmanyaapi sadakurvano madyashrayo/
madprasadavapnoti shasvatam padam-vyayam)." This is a surefire means of
worshipping the Universal Big Brother through our tiny actions, says Sri
Jnandadeva in his wonderful Marathi commentary on the verse: "Like a crystal
of salt taking refuge in water, or the wind becoming motionless in the sky,
he who takes shelter in Me through body, mind and act, becomes one with Me." |
