PIYUSH ROY draws from the epics to illustrate the true meaning of what intimate friendship is all about
The ‘liberal’ lifestyle perspectives being coined today can be encountered in the epic Mahabharata, such as libertines,metrosexuals, independent women, feisty transgenders, short affairs, long bromances and more…. If, for a moment, one keeps the holiness of the mahakavya and its characters aside, and reviews it as a gripping tale of human drama only, the Mahabharata could also be savoured as a delightful collation of some truly intense and memorable friendships — on either side of ‘right and wrong’, among the saintly and the sinful — across sexuality, gender and intimacies.
Both Arjuna and Draupadi beseech Krishna, at different times, to be their sakha, friend.Is it because only God has the ability to be a true sakha? ‘Friend’ is a limiting term to describe the immense potential and affections that encompass the word ‘sakha’. It could perhaps be a combination of a friend, philosopher,guide and more with compassion and empathy being its dominant, binding emotion.
Arjuna has his fair share of loves and independent life goals and roles.So,too, has Krishna. Much earlier in the epic, before the Gita revelation happens,savour the many instances of how Krishna and Arjuna, ‘hang out’ with each other, or the ‘crazy’ things they do for the other. Arjuna gamely cross-dresses as a woman and steps into the public space to get Krishna’s message to princess Rukmini, to facilitate her escape with his friend, Krishna, who, in his earthly lila, wants his human friend to feel that the avatar cannot do without him.And if an avatar is the friend, it is but natural that Arjuna, in Krishna’s presence, is in perpetual sakhabhav, or ‘a blissful state of mood friendship nurtured in platonic love’.
A sustained manifestation of that mood in the subconscious is seen more deeply in Krishna’s sensing of Draupadi’s every ‘needing’ of him. Draupadi married five of the most able and desirable men of her times.Yet,whenever she felt deeply vulnerable, needy or beset by turbulence — existential, emotional or moral — she sought her sakha Krishna, only. Much before the cheerharan, disrobing, and rescue, there are many instances before and after of Draupadi seeking Krishna’s counsel and calm.
Why do we hide secrets from siblings we have grown up with, and yet tend to be totally open, for instance, in a ‘brother-like’relationship formed outside? Is it because friendship is the only relationship we choose for ourselves? We don’t learn to survive a friend;we decide to live with it.Even parents,once their children have grown, and spouses, after certain years of togetherness, aspire to be friends with their kids and partners, respectively.
Both Arjuna and Draupadi, despite being husband and wife,could be completely at ease with their every vulnerability with Krishna, their sakha… but not with each other.This perhaps explains why some of our deepest,life sustaining bonds often happen outside of a marriage.
Ironically, these liberating aspects to our religious texts and icons are rarely engaged with by their ritualistic interpreters. The paraphernalia of organised religion often distorts the inherent fluidity of scriptural anecdotes and the rejuvenating independence of spirituality, by turning faith into a regulating order of control,based on morals and judgements that play up our fears and condemn our weaknesses, instead of celebrating and cementing the ‘incomplete’ that’s inherent to each of us, as human beings. If one subscribes to the atheist contention that God was an idea created by evolving humanity,perhaps it happened when man started looking at something beyond his immediate world, once he started getting repeatedly disillusioned by the incompleteness of fellow humans to be that someone, who could comfort him, indulge his hungers, look after his insecurities,look over his inadequacies… and just listen.Basically,someone who could just be his ‘sakha’.
Mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik in My Gita, offers an exposition capturing the term’s essence, as ‘someone who can see your slice of reality, your insecurity and vulnerability, and comfort you, without making you feel small or wrong,or without wanting to change or correct you….’ Irrespective of how far or near a sakha is,or how easy or embarrassing you are, he will never avoid, underestimate or abandon you.
Pure sakhabhav has to dawn,it cannot be commanded. It is to be felt, not articulated. It has to happen, not be planned. Often it reveals itself, when least expected.
Krishna has his longest ‘heart-to heart’ conversation in the Mahabharata with Arjuna, when the latter is at his weakest state, emotionally, on a battlefield. That’s what makes the Gita so relatable, universal and a calming counselling experience, too.
Not every friend can be a sakha. Yet, none leaves this world without being touched by an experiencing of the sakhabhav, either. Each of us have that potential to be someone’s sakha. Don’t fret if you feel an existing friendship is inadequate; there is somebody else.That person need not necessarily be a ‘same age or same gender’buddy. They could be a teacher, parent, partner, mentor, or an elder, rejuvenating younger camaraderie, a friend met late in life, a work colleague who becomes a companion by chance, or varying combinations of all.Maybe it is not possible for just one human being to be that Krishna-equivalent with unceasing patience and kindness,which only something infinite like the Godidea or God-consciousness can conjure, as one battles one’s existence woes like Arjuna or Draupadi.
But when it happens, the realisation dawns in that relation’s subtle or sustained abilities to heal our incompleteness. The gender and age of that person is immaterial — because this is the deepest bond between two beings that kicks off from where everything material and sexual,physical and artificial ends, so that one can bare one’s soul before the other.(The writer is a film critic and associate professor in Liberal Studies at Jain University, Bengaluru.)
Your Best Friend, The Speaking Tree, 04 August 2018
Piyush Roy draws from the epics to illustrate the true meaning of what intimate friendship is all about
https://www.speakingtree.in/article/your-best-friend