Kane and Abel, and Yoga

Do you know an eight year old who rules his house? Lets call him K. He is a straightforward young man, a king in demeanor, but plagued by the tyranny of an older brother, whose taunts and flaunts throw him off the edge all too often. Let us be fair to him. Life is hard and messy. Sometimes he has to resort to what can only be called bawls. It brings into the picture a mother who was musing her way to nirvana just before the bawl shook her to action. As she enters the scene of the turmoil, she finds K in charge of a laptop, his hands shaking, as if he had just retrieved it from an enemy. There is no sight of an enemy. There is only his older brother in the room, who is engrossed in a book that he has on his lap, as he reposes on his bed, like a silent bystander. Lets be fair to him. Little brothers can be pesky. “All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” wrote Mr Shakespeare. But when he listed all the roles a man plays, he missed one. That of a brother. It may not be crucial in Shakespeare’s world, but it is in the world of this mother. How do we forget the earliest of brothers, Mr Kane and Mr Abel?

So, there the mother finds them. One melting to tears, and the other, frozen in quietude. She sees that the scene had resolved itself, and a wrong move would spin things to wrong turns. A wrong admonition could inflame self-righteousness and bring reactions that she had seen repeated, in loud frequencies that visit the house consistently. After all, it is a world of brothers, and a mother who is not the epitome of self-control. But not this day. This day is meant for peace.

She sits quietly on the bed, and speaks,

“You know, I heard somebody talk about a boy called K. not the one who is playing his video game right now, not the one whom his brother irritated, nor the one who was crying. This K is peaceful, calm, satisfied, happy and loving,”

K is already calm, and occupied, punching his way at timeless battles in a boy’s world of endless video games. It is a place of retreat. A world he understands better than the real one.

“That’s not the talk you heard, I am sure,” says our young K, of course, disinterested.

“Do you know where that K lives? Inside you. So when you are angry, sad or mad, tell yourself, I am not this K who is angry, sad or mad. I am a peaceful K, a loving K, a happy K,”

“The talk was not about me, right?” says K, to set things straightened, once and for all. People are not to be confused with. A Kane is not the same as an Abel.

” Dear K, even though you are called K, and I have my name and your brother his, aren’t we all the same inside? All the same creation, who want love, happiness, contentment, peace…? Its all inside us and we don’t realize it all the time.”

As K keeps punching at the keyboard, it is the older brother who raises his head from his book,steals a glance at his mother and shakes his head.

Then, the brothers go back to their pastimes. Silence follows, except for the click-clacking of the keyboard. Life has found a new rhythm with the invention of these machines. As if humanity is on a kind of life support. It is not very different in the house that K rules. But in the midst of all the clicking and clacking, timeless teachings do find its way to envelope and soothe. It is possible that one day, K will rule over his own personality too, Raja Yoga they call it in Hindu philosophy. Never easy with a brother around, K will attest, so would have Kane.

Is this not a world of brothers? Of shooting egos and flaming jealousies? Don’t mark your Kanes and Abels yet, please.The world is shifting and turning, each moment. Look within and you would find the two inside too. What lifts us out and up, is yoga, remembrance.

In a world of brothers, mess is always around the corner. The brawls and the bawls will also go on. 🙂