Ramayana is one of the stories that we all have heard and seen many times. Who might have missed the re-telecast of the iconic serial on Doordarshan during lockdown? After all, Ram is one of the most celebrated icons of our country. So today, I am going to talk about one story from Ramyana.
Ramyana has been written and rewritten by many saints, poets and authors in various languages. It has been retold lakhs of times by different orators. And every person has made some additions to the story. One such story was added by Ramnatha in his Telugu retelling Ramnatha Ramyana.
The story is from the time when Ram and Lakshman had reached the end of the land in pursuit of Sita. There was a vast sea in front of them and the only way to reach Lanka was building a bridge on the sea.
The Vanar sena was on the task for building the bridge. The monkeys would carry large rocks and boulders and throw them in the sea. The stones being porous, were floating on the sea water. They were singing songs in the praise of lord. With so much positive energy in the air, all creatures wanted to help in this huge task. While Lord Hanuman and all the others in Ram’s vanara army carried the largest boulders and rocks; the smaller creatures wanted to help as well. squirrels.
One squirrel was watching all this action for distance. He thought of helping in the huge task. But with his small size, he definitely couldn’t carry and rocks. The squirrel started to carry some small pebbles in his mouth, and then he would go and put these pebbles on the bridge. The squirrel was doing this task for a long time, without anyone noticing. Anyone except Ram. Ram was looking at the squirrel from distance and smiling with happiness.
The squirrel was silently carrying pebbles when a monkey spotted him. The monkey asked what he was doing there, and shouted at him to get out of the way. The squirrel said he was carrying pebbles to build Lord Ram’s bridge. The monkey laughed at the squirrel as if to say, “What can you do, you tiny squirrel?”. Ram was looking at this conversation and was listening to the words. The squirrel firmly said that he is also helping to build the bridge, just like all the monkeys are. The monkey laughed at him and asked how a small squirrel can help in building such big bridge.
At this time, Ram joins the discussion. Ram says “While all the monkeys are carrying nig rocks and boulders, there are many gaps between these rocks. We need small pebbles to fill up this gap. And the pebbles put by Squirrel are helping in the cause. The squirrel is just making the bridge strong”.
Ram lifted up the little squirrel, thanked him for all his hard work, and blessed him by stroking his back. Even today, the stripes on the back of Indian Palm squirrels are attributed to this stroking by Ram.
Ramayana, as I mentioned earlier, has a lot of lessons to learn. The squirrel, a small creature was playing his role silently. In every company and social organization, every single person is doing his / her job. It may seems significant or insignificant to others. But yet, every contribution is equally important. The way Ram mentions, this small contribution by the squirrel is actually making the bridge stronger. Are you ready to play your own small contribution to make your organization stronger? The monkey initially didn’t acknowledge or appreciate the efforts of the squirrel. But Ram did. He was observing everyone’s contributions. For him, no contribution was small or big. For him, every contribution was a contribution towards the great cause.
It is upto you what you want to be? Do you want to be a monkey and ignore everyone else’s contributions? Or you want to be Ram and acknowledge everyone’s contribution equally? A very important question you need to ask yourself if you want to be a good leader.
I hope you have learned some important lesson through this article. I will be eagerly waiting for your feedback on this article. And next month, I will be back with another story and another article.