Ahimsa And I

By Chandini Ravikumar

As I reminisce my good-old school days, and the history lessons learnt during that time, all that would appear in my mind are, the valuable teachings of our India’s phenomenal, and one of the world’s greatest freedom activist, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. While as children, majority of us would have known the term “Ahimsa” meaning, “non-violence.”

On writing of Ahimsa, it literally makes me wonder, if I could go back in time, and re-live those innocent days as a child. If given a chance, I would love to go back to school again, learn the moral values imparted to me, and unlearn the unfavored values, just so, we follow non-violence. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Wouldn’t the world be a more peaceful place to live in, if our thoughts and actions remained naïve and child-like?

As we age into mature individuals, there will be plenty of instances in our lives that make us get frustrated and depressed, when things do not happen the way, we envisioned. How we overcome these pressures in our day-to-day activities, and how we deal with them, is what will determine if we can become strong-minded and confident individuals.

As an adult facing the quarter-life crisis, the dearest ones in my life, and my well- wishers have always known of me as, a calm, kind, caring, affectionate, generous, and a woman with great level of tolerance. However, is it possible for any human-being in this world, to maintain a sense of calmness all through their lives? Definitely not. Besides, for a person with these innate characteristics, the next question we may tend to ask ourselves might be ‘Why should we be the good people always?’ Of course not, as we all hold a certain threshold limit.

The second question would be, ‘What did we gain by being nice and kind?’ Hilarious as it sounds, being nice is often only a one-way thing, and the other person fails to reciprocate to us in the exact same way. Whatsoever, I have come to realize that, it is a highly opinionated, and a judge-mental world no matter what an angel you and I can be. Henceforth, leading to the third question: ‘Should we stop being angels at all?’

Keeping the sarcasm aside, life has certainly taught us how to handle peer pressures, and several obstacles in a composed manner. We also learn to get accustomed to dealing with situations, with sheer modesty, diplomacy, dignity, class, and above all, with non-violent attitude in mind, as what we think in our minds is what gets resorted to our actions.

It therefore, depends on us in entirety, on how we choose to control those actions to the best of our abilities, and hence, trying to seek Ahimsa in every instance possible.

By Chandini Ravikumar