Inner Metamorphosis

Of the many reasons we celebrate Diwali, one of the chief is the return of Shri Rama to His home after 14 years of exile. Consider our good fortune that we will see Him back home, back to his Ayodhya, after over 500 years of exile. This is the story of unyielding persistence against insurmountable odds. This is a saga of civilizational yagna against repeated assaults, two waves of Abrahamic attacks, and then from a 'secular' state that has been as much a stranger to its roots as its foreign rulers were.  I shudder to think about the kind of upbringing that results in statements like: " Shri Rama wouldn't have wanted to build his temple this way". "This is not my Hinduism". "Shouldn't we focus on economy instead of a mandir?". "Why rake up the unpleasant past? Let's look at future." It cuts a sorry figure that many of our own think this way. It only reflects how poorly conversant they are with the epics. Consider the stratagems...