I was once a defiant, stubborn, questioning and reckless young boy. At a very young age I started to decipher the questions of right and wrong, moral and immoral. Around
the same time, I noticed a poster in my room, which was there for long
in a corner where my mother used to perform her daily puja. It was a saffron clad portrait of Swami Vivekananda. The poster had a few messages by Swamiji. One of them read- “Strength is life, weakness is death“.
During my childhood, I was taught that convention and what everyone else thought, matters. It was this saffron clad monk who helped me unlearn it. “I will die a thousand deaths rather than lead a jelly-fish existence and yield to every requirement of this foolish world”, the monk thundered though the years into my mindspace. I knew as long as I am not ethically or morally wrong, and as long as my path is truthful, success or failure doesn’t matter.
It was this saffron clad monk who gave me freedom from fear. It was this man whose vision makes me feel proud of the culture of this land even today. Years have passed since I first fell in love with this simple man and his simple teachings. Today, as the world celebrates the 150th birth anniversary year of the great soul, I’ll have some childish, but very personal reasons to thank my childhood friend- the saffron clad monk!