KARMA

When the devastating cyclone of 2004 hit Veluvedapathy a coastal town in Tamilnadu, it crippled areas up to Vellore. A lone Hindu temple and the church of our Lady of Velangani stood as mute witnesses to the fury of the angry sea! Though the sense of devastation sent shock waves around the world, the people in surrounding areas just attributed it to Karma or Fate.

In the Hindu spiritual tradition Karma is inbuilt to deal with calamity, misery and even though their life was reduced to rubble and many had no homes left to sleep, the community after the initial shock and tears went back to living a life with no future. Even our “Lady of perpetual succor” could not offer anything more concrete than sympathy to the affected people.

The resilience and stoicism seems to have been threaded into the mosaic of their lives along with Karma. The watched warily as some NGO’s rushed aid and food suppliers while their own treacherous Govt. machinery was evasive and immobile.

Karma or fatalism has deep and primitive roots in this subcontinent and most Indians believe that their destiny is fixed at birth itself and fate will play out the role assigned to it in their lives. The threat of death as a predator that lurks in a dark corner is an abiding thought carried by everyone. In a quiet corner of the eastern minds mystique, the physical possibility of death hovers like a faint shadow. This Karma module helps them to weather, pestilence, wars, earthquakes tsunami’s and the resultant hunger and misery and it has evolved to arise at the mere idea of a threat. Sitting somberly it urges contemplation rather than action depending on the circumstances. It is the only support system that they have to trust. For more than thousands of years this has historically been drummed into their minds and the wild bodies as the reality of suffering! An innocuous word “Karma’’ remains profoundly traditional in which individuals do not fight their destinies. Very difficult for the Zany western modern culture to understand and will always remain and enigma!

As everything is pre-ordained they stop taking life so seriously and enjoy the beauty that surrounds their poverty ridden life. They comprehend the timelessness of nature and revel in its infinite reach and stretch out to life in its full essence.