Cannot let go . . .

Let me tell you a story: In the Mahabharata, Parashurama was the instructor of the warrior Karna, born to a Kshatriya mother but raised as the son of a charioteer, or lower class of Kshatriyas. Karna came to Parashurama after being rejected from the school of Drona, who taught the five Pandava and one hundred Kaurava princes. . . . One day, Parashurama was sleeping with his head resting on Karna's thigh, when a beetle crawled up and bit Karna's thigh, boring into it. In spite of the bleeding and the pain, he neither flinched nor uttered a cry so that his teacher could continue his rest (Sourced from: http://www.agnihotrausa.net/Lord-Parashuram.html).

Well, I told you the story so that my post becomes easier to relate. Like the warrior Karna, who did not budge when the beetle was biting him so that he would not rouse his master, I find it extremely difficult to budge when someone holds my hand and falls asleep. This mostly happens in the context of younger kids and cousins who come home. 

The young ones hold my hand and drift away to sleep. In spite of sleeping soundly, they don’t let go of my hand and this causes immense conflict within me. When I sleep, I always like to toss and turn until I fall asleep and hence would like to be free of any physical contact. But some of my cousins and sometimes even my sister tend to hold my hand which restricts my movement. Somehow, I think that if I move or try to disengage their hand from mine, their sleep will be disturbed and so I continue to lie motionless. Many times it has so happened that when the person holding my hand tends to snore, I think that I can safely but gently disentangle my hand. But it seldom happens so. The person immediately stirs and also awakens. When the person’s peaceful slumber is disturbed, it causes quite a furore and hence I tend to avoid movement of any sort. I patiently wait for the time when the person turns to the other side eventually letting go of his/her clasp on my fingers. Until then, I somehow try (sometimes successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully) to unclasp my fingers from theirs. Sometimes even when mosquitoes tend to bite me, it is difficult to unclasp the fingers.

Though Karna’s sacrifice was quite an extreme one and mine cannot come anywhere close to his experience, the basic premise of the argument is movement. 

Well, how comfortable or uncomfortable are you in disengaging yourself from another’s clasp while they are near-sleep or sleeping? 

Image: Internet