DASH + HARA — Taken Away All Ten Of Them
By Suresh Kurl
Dashehra is one of those celebrations that remind us year after year that there is no room for the unrighteous conduct in our society. Death penalty has been an acceptable punishment for demonic crimes, not only in Hinduism, in Buddhism and Jainism as well.
Dashehra is also known as Vijyadashmi. Why, because it was on the tenth lunar day (dashami), between the months of September and October, Lord Vishnu achieved his objective by killing Ravana and his associates in crime.
I recall the day we celebrated Dashehra. My dad would wake us up before the sunrise and pass on two items to us to look at – a silver bowl of yogurt and a silver rupee signifying purity and prosperity. Then, all day long, fishermen would go door to door with a tiny little fish swimming in a bowl of water to remind that just as Lord Vishnu saved the earth from the mythical deluge by incarnating as fish (Matsyavatar), Dashehra is the day when He as Rama protected the earth from the deluge of Raven’s monstrosities.
Although Dashehra is a Kshatriya festival and Rama was a Kshatriya, every caste celebrates it enthusiastically. I would go searching for fresh cow dung to make ten dung balls, substitute for Ravana’s ten heads. Mom would place those balls in a circle on a freshly cleaned floor and then place a zucchini flower on each dung head. God only knows why the zucchini flowers! But her explanation was that they are easy picks. They symbolize the same minimal effort Rama had to make to sever Ravana’s heads as it takes us to pick zucchini flowers from their plants. If Ravana’s ghost were lurking around he would cry over the indignity to his body.
The worship of weapons was a part of the celebration. Dad and my brothers would clean up the family sword, spear and a handful of knives, but not the ones with broken tips and place them outside the circle, with a brass image of Rama inside the circle. Then we would sit around, pray to Rama and offer the idol the long barley strands we cultivated for the offering.
Then, every male attending the ceremony entered his name in a long red notebook marking his presence at the occasion. Mom and sister never entered their names as if their presence did not matter. This was one of several discriminatory traditions that were later amended.
Another tradition that we followed on this day was to send off the youngest school-age son, who happened to be me, to a residential school (gurukul) just as Rama and his three brothers were sent off to Vashishtha’s Boarding School, when they were five years old. It must be a co-incidence that Rama killed Ravana the same day he started his education, on the tenth lunar day between the months of September and October.
I used to look forward to this day for certain financial gains as well. In the evening, family elders would give children spending money at the Ramlila fair. I used to spend my money on paper umbrellas, paper snakes that crawled and slither by pulling a string, and certainly a clay piggy bank.
The segment of Ramlila, on the day of Dashehra, was almost a foregone conclusion. Every child knew that was the day when Rama would kill Ravana and regain Sita, his wife. What we looked forward the most was the last act, when Ravana’s effigy, filled with firecrackers, was set on fire.
Whenever we went to the Ramlila grounds, mom and dad’s biggest concern used to be what if my brother Shashi and I were accidentally separated from each other in that huge-unruly crowd? I remember noticing several children crying and going round and round the entire field with volunteers. If the children were smaller, the volunteers put them up on their shoulder and carried them while ringing a bell indicating the child sitting on their shoulder was lost. We always returned home safely, sometimes even on my brother’s back enjoying a piggyback ride.
The story of Rama and Ravana taught me that whatever happens in life is preordained. Nothing happens without the sanction of God. Ravana was not known to be stupid. He was a scholar of Vedas, a devout worshipper of Lord Shiva and a Brahma, and yet he continued to walk on an evil path.
It does not matter how we plan or scheme to insulate ourselves against our karmic consequences, they catch up with us. Though Ravana had ten heads to think and was armed to his teeth with divine weapons for protection his karmic credit still ran out. At the end, our Karma, well that is the only measurement that is used to measures our reward and punishment, not our caste or gender.
During ancient time, Brahmins were considered holy and women vulnerable. They were “abadhya;” never to be killed. It was the moral duty of a Kshatriya to protect them. However, if a Brahmin or a woman fell from their dharma they were punished, even with death. Ravana, despite being a Brahmin and Surpanakha, his sister being a woman were punished for seducing Rama and plotting to steal his wife for her brother. A legend is that even Rama had been punished by the Brahmin of his time for killing Ravana, a Brahmin. When Rama offered a ritual feast to the Brahmins to atone his sin, they rejected that feast and walked away.
