The Awful Act

Myself and my one friend were on morning stroll on one winter morning of January last. We were just moving with ease feeling the fresh breeze entering the lungs and refreshing ourselves.  Few steps ahead there was garbage stored that made the breeze bad smelling. We just tried to get a quick slip out of that spot. Yet we saw few dogs were barking on each other trying to snatch some thing wrapped in a bundle. My friend just looked at that point of tumult where one bull dog was taking the wrapped bundle into its jaws which was nothing but a newly born infant which was being taken from jaw to jaw of the barking dogs. My friend just lifted the stick to show the dog running with the wrapped child into its jaws.  Leaving the wrapped child the dog ran away to escape its life. We just gave a peep on the wrapped child that was badly injured, bleeding all around that yet just breathing hardly.  My friend being a doctor was owner of his own clinic so he immediately rushed to it and calling the duty nurse started treatment of the child after making a report with police.  After few days’ efforts it was hard to escape that child so that was our bad luck that we faced defeat in struggle for saving one new life of a female child.

That event made me to think so deeply and so sadly on the event. Who was the mother committing such an awful and obnoxious act of throwing the newly born child in such a way on the garbage store? What was the reason for doing that? Where was lost the mother’s affection, loving passion for one soul whom she kept within the belly for nine months? How our norms fallen down nowadays? There were lot of such questions in my mind which were getting no answer except imagination which was never close the reality.

I happen to know one woman who was craving for one child which she could not get even after thirty years of her marriage. She was said to be a very gentle woman who never committed bad act, never even thought of doing evil to any body in her life of more than 45 years. Whenever I find her she always was found smiling, empty eyes and with great distress.  In my Utopia I just tried to link her life with the above event.  I have read so many Hindu religious books and in that mythological concept there’s rebirth of a soul – i.e. life after death and death after life.  I find that gentle woman committing that awful, obnoxious act of throwing the infant after wrapping into rags on the garbage store. Consequently after more than thirty years of her marriage she could not get even one issue in reward of that. Nature bestowed her one issue which she had thrown due to any reason or compulsion for committing that. What was coming and striking to my mind was the saying of Lord Krishna in Chapter II(47) of Shrimadbhagvad Geeta wherein it ‘s told that everyone is free to do any act whatever sweets yet he has no right upon the fruit or consequence of that act.

                             Karmanyevadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachane |

                             Ma karmphalheturbuma te sangoastvakarmani ||47||

                       deZ.;sokf/kdkjLrs ek Qys"lq dnkpu A

                       ek deZQygsrqHkZweka rs l³~xks∙LRodekZf.k AA47AA

That means thou hast a right to action, but merely to action, never to its fruits; let not the fruits of thy works be thy motive, neither let there be in thee any attachment to inactivity.

In other words we may say the fruit belongs solely to the Lord of all works; our only business with it is to prepare the success by a true and careful action and to offer it, if it comes, to the divine Master.  Afterwards even as we have renounced attachment to the fruit, we must renounce attachment to the  work; at any moment we must be prepared to change one work, one course or one field of action for another or abandon all works if that is the clear command of the Master. Otherwise we do the act not for HIS sake but for our satisfaction and pleasure in the work; from the kinetic nature’s need of action or for the fulfillment of our passions or inclinations to do something according to our own sweet will but these are all stations and refuges of the ego… In the end, as the attachment  to the fruit of the work and to the work itself has been excised from the heart, so also the last clinging attachment to the idea and sense of ourselves as the doer has to be relinquished; the Divine Power must be known and felt above and within us as the true sole worker.