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Beyond Festivity

After my little shopping trip for a littler Diwali celebration at home, my thoughts turned to why we do infact celebrate this holiday and how my understanding is fairly primitive given that I have not read any scholarly commentary on Ramayan. There is always the over-simplification of the story, honing on specific pieces of it out of context in the pursuit of some agenda and finally derivate literature that are so far removed from the source that it might as well be a different thing. My mother is a fan of Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri and I have heard a lot of praise for his erudition from her. Recently, I spend several hours listening to his lectures on the character of Ram and why he is revered, the popular misunderstandings about him and why is human flaws make him the ideal role model. 

For me, this was the most I have learned on the topic in a few hours. It felt particularly timely because holding on to and passing tradition to the next generation is that much harder for a person who is not deeply anchored, and actually understands the reason behind things. What served me well growing up feels insufficient now because I am no longer immersed in the culture and things don't just happen naturally anymore. Detached from meaning, the festival becomes disembodied - just a ritual to follow mindlessly based on a date on the calendar. Instead, his lectures got me thinking about celebrating the ideals that Ram is meant to represent - knowledge with humility, strength with forgiveness - were the two that felt most important for me at this moment, this year of my life.

The professional life of a person like me is about being surrounded by self-promotion, peddling a smattering of understanding on something as vision and so on. There are people in my network who describe themselves as polymaths and without any shred of irony. In that world, staying quiet and unassuming is a way to become invisible, irrelevant and dispensable. It was good to be reminded of what is considered perfect and ideal even if achieving that state is full of hardship and peril. The next one about forgiving freely and easily despite having strength to fight and win.  This one I know is incredibly hard because I have worked on it for decades and still slip up. At that moment, it feels like all the work went to waste. Maybe it did not, maybe it takes a lot more work because it is a goal truly worth achieving. 

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