Celestial Dancers!

“God alone is your anchor, who will save you from stress and storm.” (Bhagwan Baba)

Indian Mythology is so rich and there is so much to learn from the little anecdotes therein. Every time I read a mythological text, I find a treasure. Here is one of them.

Indra, the King of the Devas had a thousand wives. One day his wife Indrani asked him, which one of the two celestial dancers was the better one of the two. The two dancers Rambha and Urvashi were equally beautiful, talented, and graceful and used to entertain at the court of Indra. That evening Indra noted with minute precision each move and expression of the two damsels as they danced together in unison, but he could not find a flaw in either. He turned to Narada to help him judge the better of the two.

Narada suggested a dance competition wherein musicians and accompanists were asked to play a myriad tunes of music from the slowest to the fastest. The contest went on for days, but neither of the two dancers did falter. Indra was at his wits end.

The following day when the contest entered the next round, Narada asked for four lotus buds to be brought to him. He touched each of them and then gave two each to both the dancing girls. So now both Rambha and Urvashi had a lotus bud in each of her hands and the music started. Narada instructed the musicians to play slow and soft music. As the hours passed he instructed the musicians to play faster and faster still. A time came when the Apsaras were dancing so fast that you could barely see their limbs as they whirled to the music, Narada signalled for the music to be sped up even further.

All of a sudden Rambha tossed one of the lotus buds away with a jerk! The musicians abruptly halted! Resultantly Urvashi became the winner of the contest!

“But, what happened to Rambha?” asked Indra. Narada smiled mischievously saying that he had touched the lotus buds and placed a black scorpion into each of them. While dancing, the girls were holding the flowers gracefully in their hands. As the music became faster and faster the stress increased. Rambha, in a moment of stress, squeezed her palm and the black scorpion inside bit her hard! She spontaneously jerked her hand and the flower got flung away!

The story has a deep meaning. Modern living has made our lives so fast, it’s like we are always jet speeding and trying to accomplish ten things at a time. An average teenager in a metro city receiving a decent education in a college probably has access to a smart phone, Wifi, internet, email, Whats’app, snapchat and whatnot.

Each notification on his/ her phone, demands attention. The mind is expected to attend to and reply to all messages, jokes, forwards, photographs etc .. the list is too long to enumerate. An average office going person who has access to a computer or a laptop is also zig zagging between work related emails, internet surfing, linked-in, networking etc. etc.

Needless to say, stress levels are sky rocketing in everyone. Equanimity of mind is a rarity in the world today. From babies to oldies, it seems everyone is stressed. So, is it a wonder that the scorpion inside stings us? The world is not going to stop giving you stress. It is unreasonable to expect the world to be kind to you. If you want to help yourself, you have to be kind to yourself. Doing is important but sometimes in the process, the mental build up is so much that stress overpowers and everything comes crashing down.