The Last Monkey-Soldier on the Ram Setu

Trust, Surrender, Faith, and Belief are all commonly used words. They are also inextricably linked to courage, for to observe any of them, which are different terms for the same expression, one needs a mountainous resolve. I will come back to elaborate on this idea!

A strange emotion gripped me, a few days ago, while listening to an animation song on building up of Ram Setu, a NASA-acknowledged 48-km bridge used by Lord Ram and his army of monkey-soldiers to cross over from Pamban Island in Tamil Nadu to Mannar Island in Sri Lanka, as the two points of the bridge are called in contemporary times. According to legend, the bridge was built from big rocks that floated on water once touched by the essence which the Lord Ram was/is. But this is all mythical!

If at all, for the sake of argument, we believe it to be true. Just for the sake of the argument. Then it opens up a Pandora’s box in your inquiring mind.

When I intrinsically believed and felt it to be true while listening to that song. When I was immersed in the magnanimity and divinity of the mythical tale, it occurred to me, in a flash, that how much trust the monkey-army and everyone who followed the Lord on that makeshift bridge on a water body as vast, deep and humongous as sea, would have placed in a seemingly simple man.

Perhaps you can associate with my wondering in this way. Fast forward the same situation today and imagine a personality, a leader asking you to walk on a bridge on a sea immediately after it has been built not with the conformity and safety of the modern technology but with the unseen, unknown, untested power of a man, who the monkey-army thought of someone so moral that He could conjure miracles out of His ordinary and simple outlook. Juxtapose this situation with a contemporary event for further clarity. Do all of us still trust the safety of the Covid-19 vaccines despite several world leaders publicly getting it administered to instill confidence?

At this point, I would like to go back to the opening lines. Trust, Faith, Surrender, Belief may appear to be casual phenomena. We may even be using them in commonest of conversations. But when it comes to actually live these characteristics, especially in search of Truth, it takes a great, great deal of courage to place your entire life into the hands of a power that you are, perhaps, not even sure of. Even if, at some level of your personality, you are sure of such a power. Even then it is not at all easy to let go of all your imaginations, attachments and a false sense of identification. The modern man, who is absorbed in material as well as emotional trivialities, is far from tasting the light heartedness that comes from total surrender. The holding on to things is so strong that the mere touch of groundlessness turns all mental faculties upside down. The man, thus, trembles with fear!

It is in this context that I feel dumbfounded by the mere thought of a combined/common mental consciousness that posed so much trust in the Man they followed that they cared two hoots about being swallowed by the huge waves of a Sea. As a student of life and a seeker of Truth, through this piece, I pay my respect to the monkey-soldiers who built and took the Ram Setu on a call of a simple Man. More so, I pay my special tribute to the monkey-soldier who walked last in that army, farthest from Lord Ram (who I assume led the army) but still believing so resolutely in the presence of His being that he banked his life on it. That could have only happened in a common consciousness unpolluted with materialism, dishonesty, greed and arrogance. The man today must have a resolve as string and unflinching as a mountain to taste the nectar of such an awareness.

If I could get a glimpse of the essence so serene yet so powerful, then my life’s purpose would have only just begun.