WHY I STARTED LOVING THE GITHA?

Even though I live in a place where this scripture was supposed to be originated (If you go by the epic Lord Krishna has delivered Geetha in Kurukshetra. The natives have even preserved the banyan tree which witnessed this celestial inspirational message!!( Of course, I find it difficult to believe, on two counts firstly, the tree doesn’t seem to be that old and secondly and more importantly it is difficult to believe that such a long message would have been given in the midst of the war. (Probably more to do with the pilgrim tourism!!)Arguing that is not much relevant for the point under consideration. Many may not understand why I have not gone through Geetha. A person like me who has a great love for philosophy, spirituality, etc. how can I miss such world renowned work.?I have gone through many of western philosophers work. Am I having some prejudice about the Indian writers? I defend myself here. As far as great works are concerned I strongly believe there is no geographical barrier, in fact I’m an ardent admirer of great Indian works. I have gone through many of the great Indian works like – Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Panchatantra etc. Thanks to the late Kutti Krishna Marar I am a great admirer of Mahabharata and I believe this work especially is such great ocean and you can read it and get great pearls of life lessons. Now then the question arises why I am staying away from one of the most celebrated work from India. Looking back I believe that it has something to do with a bad childhood experience. My father had been a great lover of Geetha; using his literary and oratory skills he has delivered many lectures on Geetha. He was obsessed about it and he wanted to imbibe the same passion into his children. He thought of catching them young is the best option and so he started teaching us the slogans from 6th or 7th class onwards. The truth is that I neither enjoyed it nor shared his enthusiasm. (When I have become a teacher I realised the disappointment of my father. Many a times you talk to your students with great enthusiasm and get disappointed). He had tried his level best to teach and the more efforts he made my resistance to it also went up. This disappointed him and he left the whole idea. I also never dared to look into this internationally acclaimed work. Living with dad he was always telling us snippets from those works. Some of them got embedded in my mind also. My coming to Kurukshetra also did not change the situation much. (Even though slogans from this book was written all over) Last 5-10 years things have changed , after coming here I ventured into many things, I started expanding the second dimension (Reaching out to people) I started many new ventures like encouraging and tutoring mess workers , free tuition for the nearby village kids and going to a remote villages in MP and working with the tribes. Latest interest in that series was the quest forum; needless to say none of the ventures gave the result I desired. Quite naturally I was very disappointed and a bit depressed. But then my Eureka moment of Geetha came. I was enlightened by the central command of Geetha ’loosely translated it is like this’ you don’t have the right over results; you have right over your efforts only. It says you have to be detached about results, but at the same time you should not stop working. There is an irony here, we the mortals act desiring a certain result. Why should we work at all if we cannot get the result? My life lessons taught me that you put in best of efforts, you won’t be having any control over the results then the most practical way to lead a happy life is to act with detachment especially detached from the result ( of course a very difficult preposition) If you can follow it you will be a happy being else a miserable creature. If you want to act and lead a happy life better learn to accept Geetha and follow it, so probably out of compulsion I started loving Githa or at least started appreciating it. v