(or just your own)
The plains of Kurukshetra were agog with the smell of war. Tents had been pitched on either end of the battlefield. Weapons had been readied and the war-horses pounded their hooves in impatience in their stables as twilight fell over the last day of peace before war-cry. The Pandavs and the Kauravs discussed strategy and death hovered, ready to swoop down the next day. In that eventide, Kunti, the mother of the Pandavs met her first-born Karna. The child she had conceived out of wedlock and had abandoned, much like Moses, in a basket floating in the river. Karna who was brought up by a charioteer and who had grown up being sneered for harbouring ambitions of greatness despite being of an oppressed-caste. Rejected at every stage of his life, Karna shook off all discouragement to become a warrior par excellence, a loyal friend to the one person who honoured him with dignity — Duryodhana, the Kaurav prince. On the eve of battle between brothers, Kunti appealed to Karna to switch sides; victory would be inevitable if Karna and Arjun joined hands and death equally predestined for one of the two, if they stood on opposite sides of the fault-line.
Kunti offered the throne of Hastinapur to her eldest son, the one she had forsaken at birth. A desperate plea by a mother. A call to loyalty towards the womb that bore him. Did Karna budge at the prospect of finally breaking through the glass ceiling of his upbringing? Did the image of him sitting on a bedecked throne blur the kaleidoscope of friendship that Duryodhana had constructed for him? Here is what Karna told Kunti, as penned by Rabindranath Tagore:
Mother, don’t be afraid.
Let me predict: it’s the Pandavs who will win.
On the panel of this night’s gloom I can clearly read
before my eyes the dire results of war:
legible in starlight. This quiet, unruffled hour
from the infinite sky a music drifts to my ears:
of effort without victory, sweat of work without hope –
I can see the end, full of peace and emptiness.
The side that is going to lose –
please don’t ask me to desert that side.
Let Pandu’s children win, and become kings,
let me stay with the losers, those whose hopes will be dashed.
The night of my birth you left me upon the earth:
nameless, homeless. In the same way today
be ruthless, Mother, and just abandon me:
leave me to my defeat, infamous, lustreless.
Only this blessing grant me before you leave:
may greed for victory, for fame, or for a kingdom
never deflect me from a hero’s path and salvation.
- Karna Kunti Sambad by Rabindranath Tagore (translated by Ketaki Kushari Dyson)
Karna was killed by Arjun in the Mahabharat war. In mythology he remained a sorrowful character who never got his due. But his heroism shone through in his sacrifice. Loyalty to friendship withstood the temptation of riches and royalty.
Temptation and sacrifice have filled pages of mythology and scripture. The ability to forgo gratification to stave off future misery was a proposition that our forefathers practised — “that something better might be attained in the future by giving up something of value in the present”.
The Bible is replete with stories of sacrifice, starting from the time the primordial parents of believers, Adam and Eve discovered death and were banished from Paradise. Adam was sentenced to a lifetime of hard work — the only way he could prolong his mortal existence. The idea that by behaving in a certain way, by organizing our impulses and by not being supremely selfish one could bring rewards in the future led to social contracts that involved human beings building relationships based on promises of sacrifice, big or small, that an otherwise unbridled brain would not consider.
In the Abrahamic stories, God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac (who, by the way, was born through divine intervention when Abraham was 100, hence extremely precious and gifted by God himself), a challenge that Abraham was ready to meet. In Islam the same story takes a different turn when Ibrahim was ready to sacrifice his son Ismail on his God’s conditions. In either case, God intervened and the human sacrifice was not required, a ram being killed instead, but the readiness to go through a horrific tragedy earned God’s pleasure. Id-ul Zuha celebrates Sacrifice and our scriptures — irrespective of the religion — tell us that a person cannot attain true righteousness until he purposely gives away what he loves the most. Our generosity is measured by the extent to which we are willing to sacrifice for a just cause something we need ourselves.
These are stories that talk of scary sacrifices but in reality, we tend to go through mundane routine, often making choices that involve saying “no” because it possibly would result in a more favourable outcome in the medium to long term. The choice to study today instead of watching Netflix because exams are looming, to look away from that cheesecake and get into the size 4 jeans that have been languishing in the cupboard, to save a part of the monthly salary instead of splurging on new technology because you intend to pay for your postgraduate programme next year. These are all sacrifices that the human mind has learnt to make — giving up something in the present for a better future. Ritual sacrifices are outdated. But you will save the best cut of meat for your child.
We are conditioned to discipline ourselves to look into the future and decide that by being a little less impulsively hedonistic today, we might make tomorrow a bit more secure and productive.
Like Adam was admonished to labour for his existence, there is little difference between sacrifice and work. That’s why we spend most of our lives behind desks or in fields or researching new technology in laboratories — and not lolling on beach chairs or doing something mindlessly entertaining. The agony of unemployment is not merely economic in nature — it is a combination of needing to earn a livelihood and a constant urge to redeem ourselves in our own eyes. We are born to work, just as Adam was told he had to. And in the process we give up what we perceive as pleasure. Much like Abraham, we seem to thrive on the thought that God’s favour (or Society’s if God is not in our lexicon) could be gained through discipline and work, both of which translate to giving up momentary pleasure.
The armed forces, terrorist groups, immigrant families, middle class parents, the nanny who looks after your child, medical workers wearing hazmat suits, the garbage collector at your doorstep everyday through a pandemic, climate change activists — each of these groups is trained to forgo family, personal health, security of life to perform a function in society that is now termed “essential work”. It’s easy to say that these are forms of livelihood or even the last option to survive. But it is the human capacity to weigh in balance and make a choice to walk the tougher path that differentiates us from other creatures.
The Christian world believes that Christ sacrificed himself to set humanity free. Man was free to choose paths that may have remained untrodden, if suffocated by commandments. Karma in the Hindu faith says each of us needs to work at our wheel of fortune. Most of us live our lives in a space in between freedom and duty.
Today the religion of humanity has honed believers and atheists alike to be convinced that we sometimes do need to “give up something today for a better tomorrow”. Gandhi summed it perfectly, “Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.”
If my 7-year old daughter understands the value of recycling notebooks instead of buying a set of sequin-spangled journals, she is on the same sacrificial game that we have learnt to play for centuries.
