As we are at home and on the prowl for quality content, Ramanand Sagar\’s popular TV series Ramayana, first aired in the 1980s, has garnered huge viewership on Doordarshan within a week. According to data from television monitoring agency BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council), the mythological epic garnered 51 million viewers on the Sunday evening in the first weekend of telecast, the highest ever figure for the Hindi GEC (general entertainment channel) genre since 2015.
The show was relaunched last Saturday amid the gloomy times and has been imparting quite a lot of lessons
I watch all the episodes with my family, reliving my childhood memories and ensuring that my daughter Dhwani imbibes our cultural traditions.
Often the episodes make me think in the context of our corporate life.
In one of the episodes, we see how Manthara finally corrupts the mind of Kaikeyi and she gets poisoned by her talks. No wonder, Kaikeyi finally asks Maharaj Dashrath for her two vardaans (boons). One, that her son Bharath will get to rule the kingdom and second, that the eldest son Ram will go to vanvas (exile) for 14 years.
So imagine the plight of Lord Rama, on the eve of his being anointed as the crown-prince, and is sent to vanvas (exile) by his father
All of us have a Kaikeyi moment in our lives when someone puts a spanner in the works, leading to enormous short term sadness.
So maybe a failed exam because of a careless evaluator, a transfer order because someone had an axe to grind, a well-deserved promotion denied due to corporate politics, an interview you could not crack because of a bad interviewer, a book that could not be published because of a non-responsive editor, a candidate who backed out at the last moment or quit shortly after leaving your client.
We feel cheated – we feel dejected. We wonder what wrong we did to deserve this.
Often the Kaikeyi is under the influence of a Manthara – say a colleague who told boss that you could compete with him and emerge as a potential threat, thus boss was antagonised and stopped helping you in career forever,
What has been your Kaikeyi moment?? Or should I say moments.
(Because if Lady Luck hasn\’t smiled on you, there will be multiple such roadblocks)
But eventually it\’s this Kaikeyi moment that is responsible for helping us realise our destiny, the purpose of our life
E.g. the vanvas (exile) for Shri Ram would have caused short-term sadness but had he not gone to the forest and remained a successful king, he wouldn\’t have killed Ravana.
I remember a senior from Kolkata whose boss gave him a hostile posting, eventually forcing him to quit the company – and now that senior has risen to National Finance Head in a renowned MNC; or someone who then became a forced entrepreneur and is today doing very well. Thus the dots connected so well in retrospect.
So maybe when life gives us lemon, you end up making lemonade.
What are your views on this??