Bhagavad Gita ...As it was

Estimated time to read: 2 minutes

A post on a book club group on Facebook about the book "Bhagavad Gita As it Is" triggered this memory and I wanted to "pen" it down while I still remembered it -

I don't care much for religious scriptures anymore except for the mythological offerings that are still very interesting (pardon the harsh tone and read on 😅 ) but I have one memory associated with this book that stands out. We had a quiz contest in school that I was a part of (because my teacher no doubt thought - "This guy is good in Spoken English. Must be good at interpreting scriptures as well.") . Anyway, I turned out to be surprisingly decently smart about it and learnt enough for the quiz and our team made it to the semi finals (?) where we got weeded out but were sitting in the audience like sheep on a farm looking at birds flying in the sky. 😕

The one consolation was that all of us in the audience had team-based-numbers i.e. one number per team and the quizmaster called out a team number at random when the finalists couldn't answer a question, to see if the audience teams could. The questions rolled on and on one of them, they ended up calling our number. We were overjoyed. "Oh, we're going to ROCK this chance", we thought and started high fiving each other walking down to the podium. I still remember the question (albeit vaguely) they re-read out for our benefit 'coz in our happiness, we realized we hadn't paid attention to any part of it except the Number-calling. The question was "What did King Ambarish do with his own hands that proved him to be very humble?" ....Or something to that effect - it's been 18 years .We blinked at each other. We had no clue.Well, I stepped up and decided, he was a King, so he'd go big or go home..Right? I cleared my throat and confidently spoke into the mic - "Uhh...He Cut off his hands." . The quizmaster looked at me like they were justified in not passing us through to the finals but were also surprised that we, these ignorant worms, made it till the semis. But they politely said - "No...no...He CLEANED the temple with his own hands.". I was stumped but put on a brave face and walked back, this time not looking at my friends.

I walked back with my head held high...like a King.

On my own legs.

Apparently just actions as simple as those also count as huge achievements for one. Right?