Sunday, 17 September 2023

Teen Angst in Ancient India

Teen Angst is a term much bandied about these days about the preoccupations & sufferings of teen agers. A peek into the life of a couple of legendary teen agers in ancient India may give a fresh perspective into this.

The first is Nachiketa whom we meet in Katha Upanishad as a teen ager who was troubled not because of teen angst but when he saw his father giving away useless cattle as charity. He repeatedly questioned his father as to whom he will be given away. Exasperated, his father, said "To the God of Death". Nachiketa took his words literally & went to the God of Death & persistently questioned him about the secret of life. The God of of Death was pressurised to impart the way of Liberation following which Nachiketa was enlightened.

The other teen ager was an unjustly marginalised character in Ramayana, Shravan Kumar. His only angst was how to take care of his parents. Due to circumstances leading to a misjudgement of Dasaratha, the father of Rama, he lost his young life. His parents cursed Dasaratha that he also suffer & die because of the separation from his son Rama, which came to pass. In hindsight, one can imagine that but for this curse, Rama might never have left his father & later killed Ravana!

The important point is to realise that both Nachiketa & Shravan Kumar were not afflicted either with Teen Angst or the almost mandatory preoccupation of dating taken as a necessity by contemporary teenagers, but had a higher angst on their minds.

Even though he was married, it is sacrilegious to suggest that Yagnavalkya had dated his two(!) wives Katyayani & Maitreyi before marriage. Nearer our time, though Sri Ramakrishna himself suggested the name of his future consort, Sri Sarada Devi (18 years younger to him & a child bride of 5!), theirs was a true ideal marriage of the souls, where the wife is only a "Sahadharmini" or a companion along the path of Dharma.

We are proud of being a progressive society, who have reformed Hindu Society & become modern. Is it really a progress or  actually a regress that we have institutionalised instincts which we share with animals & forgotten what has set us apart from animals in the true evolutionary ascent of Man?

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