After another hectic week at office, I was totally drained out of energy. The feeling of despair and hopelessness was making my heart heavy. The Monday morning would start with new scores of deadlines and targets. With these mundane feelings in my mind, I started watching episodes of Mahabharat. One by one as the episodes passed by, my playlist started to play the Abhimanyu and Chakravyuh episode. It is one of the heart wrenching moments of the epic where a 16 year old kid is brutally murdered by seven shameless warriors breaking all war rules and warrior traditions.
I have seen this episode multiple times but this time I was viewing it with a different perspective.
A 16 year old kid is full of confidence. He decides to enter into a war formation - Chakravyuh which is literally a meat-grinder ready and running to rip apart the Pandava army into shreds. All this is happening when the greatest archer of all times Arjuna and the master strategist Krishna are purposefully diverted from the main battlefield.
Normally, we tend to sympathize with Abhimanyu as he entered this complex maze, getting trapped inside with no way to escape and dying like a hero. But, let's look it from a different perspective. If you imagine the red dot to be Abhimanyu and the blue disc to be the array of soldiers forming the Chakravyuh, doesn't it look like that Abhimanyu had a huge target to hit ??? Even with closed eyes if he keeps on shooting arrows indiscriminately, he is annihilating the enemy soldiers like a raging fire. On the other hand, the Kaurava soldiers and warriors have got a limited target i.e. they have to make very precise aim to knock down Abhimanyu. Any arrow fired by a Kaurava soldier that misses the kid has the potential to kill another Kaurava soldier i.e unacceptable collateral damage. This closed combat situation forces established warriors like Drona & Karna not to use divine weapons and break all the warrior codes to kill a kid who is much junior to them. The highly esteemed warriors who killed Abhimanyu lost their pride as a Kshatriya and in a way justified their own unfair deaths on the battlefield in days to come. In this case, is Abhimanyu A Victim or The Victor ???
In our day to day life, we face complex inevitable situations like the Chakravyuh. We have no option other than to face it. The fear inside us makes us sympathize with ourselves the way we sympathize with Abhimanyu getting mercilessly butchered by the Kaurava warriors. It is one of the manifestations of our low self-esteem and low confidence which drains our energy away. In such a situation, we need to view the situation from a different perspective and ask ourselves - "Am I going to play the Victim or the Victor ???". The answer that we get from within defines who we are and what role we play in the situation.
As I pen down my thoughts, its almost midnight. Another Monday morning has already started. But this time, I am ready to face it with a sense of confidence in my heart.
"The target is not too big to hit; rather, it is TOO BIG TO MISS"
