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
