My nana used to tell me a story which could almost be called mythological because Indra, the king of the devtas, was the main character.
The story went something like this.
A sadhu decided to perform tapasya to please God and attain supernatural powers. Indra, true to his character, immediately felt threatened. Singhasan dol gaya. What if the sadhu became powerful enough to take away his throne?
Indra had to do something. So he took the form of a huge, ferocious elephant and appeared before the meditating sadhu. The sadhu was terrified. He quickly folded his aasan and ran. Just then, a friendly aakashwani came to his rescue.
“Gajo mithya.”
The elephant is fake.
The sadhu stopped running. He thought for a moment and realised that if gajo mithya(the elephant was fake), then bhago bhi mithya. If the elephant was not real, the need to run away from it was not real either. He spread his aasan again and went back to his tapasya.
We are living in interesting times—Indra ko apna singhasan dolta hua lag raha hai. An institution is trying to convince us that what we are seeing is not quite what we think it is. Someone within the institution appears to see things differently. Someone outside it brings those differences into the public domain. And before we have had time to understand the elephant, we are presented with an elaborate explanation of why it isn’t really an elephant.
Quite a useful arrangement, actually. The elephant appears. Someone objects. Someone explains. Someone runs. And somewhere, presumably, Indra looks nervously at his throne. The elephant doesn’t seem particularly interested in disappearing. Nor, for that matter, does the aakashwani seem to be helping.
Nana’s story had a simple solution:
If gajo mithya, then bhago bhi mithya.
What happens when the elephant is not imaginary, the running is very real, and everyone has a different version of what they are looking at?
At that point, perhaps the only thing left to question is not the elephant,
but who is asking us to believe it isn’t there.
Story and photos by Prerna Jain.
