Aruna PrasadI am Sita, I am a Hindu.
I have a friend, her name is Nargis.
We live side by side in the same colony.
We live together, we work together. We live in peace.
I do my pooja daily,
She does her namaaz daily,
We greet each other daily,
We walk to work together.
She loves my sambar,
I love her biryani,
We share and eat together.
She fasts during Ramadaan,
I fast during Ekadasi,
We never argued which one is greater.
I love her sheer khurma,
So I wait for Ramadhan.
She loves my sooji halwa,
So she waits for Ekadasi.
She loves my sarees and jewellery.
I love her mehendi and salwars.
We shop together,
We gift each other.
We live together
We live in peace.
She eats mutton
But never forced me to eat.
I do tulasi puja,
And never asked her to do so.
But we live together
And respect each other.
She reads quran
I recite Ramayana
But never argued which one is greater.
We both believe in the Constitution of India and respect it as we both are citizens of India.
But we never questioned who is more patriotic than the other.
One day some scholars came to us.
They saw us living together and frowned at us and asked:
‘what is this? Why are you living together? You are different from each other.’
We answered, ‘ we know we are different. But we are living together just like lakhs of other people in the country.’
They said:’ No, you are ignorant as well as the others. You people don’t know your past . You are not learned. That’s why you are living together. Go home and study about your ancestors. Explore your past. Become enlightened.’
We walked back in silence without looking at each other.
We started studying history.
We did not talk to each other.
We burnt midnight oil,
We googled and googled and googled.
We studied our past and about our ancestors.
There were kings and kingdoms,
There were sultans and sultanats.
There were attacks and wars.
There were massacres and arsons.
Wars were fought for power
In the name of religion.
But nowhere in the past common people like us fought.
They lived together.
They remained ignorant.
We came out of our houses.
We hugged each other.
We went to the scholars and told them:’ We know we are different.
But we want to live together in peace.
We don’t want to be enlightened to fight.
We want to remain ignorant and live together in.peace.
Allow us to be ignorant.’
*
పెద్దన్న
Sunil Bhandari
సాబిర్
హరివెంకట రమణ
శ్రీ సుధా మోదుగు
లిఖిత్ కుమార్ గోదా
మహేష్ వేల్పుల
A highly thoughtful and catchy title.
Resonates the true feelings of millions of common people. In today’s unfortunate noise of enlighteners , such feeble wise voices are hardly listened.
_ Ramprasad
What is born out of ignorance can at best be termed as comfort and doesn’t last long. Peace is the outcome of enlightenment only and only that is eternal.
Enlightenment cannot be imposed upon any body nor does the ignorance be snatched away by others if one wishes to keep it.
When I am not a king and just an ordinary common man, I can remain as I am. But, because we are in democracy and kingship is thrust upon me (even if it is a small portion ie 1 in 130 croreth ), I have no choice but to act like king, whose primary objective is the security of the kingdom by keeping the past threats in mind.
Let us not be enlightened to be dehumanised.
Let us not be enlightened to be dehumanised.