Blog: A Legend about a questionable Loyalty

Moral lesson: Morality is an ambivalent guide. Perspective makes it either good or evil. This is the story of a family that had to cross a turbulent river in a ferry which had been moored to the piershead for many years. This was the ferry that transported all the men, women and children of the village to town.

With time and the slippery overconfidence of the villagers who thought the carriage was godgiven and would never decay nor needed repairs, they used it year in and year out without asking themselves the question - will it not yield under pressure one day when it is most urgently required?

The Jugjeet family was one day needed in town because they were the pillar of the village community and often the panchayat - like government in the town needed their advice to set matters right.

There was only one night left to join the leader of the town, and that too when it thundered and lightening cracked in the dark sky making noises that reminded the Jugjeet children of drums being rolled on an asphalted road.

Maya, the Jugjeet father said, we must travel with the family across the night so that we may reach Portgain in the morning. You must pack everything and get warm clothes for the children. I am going to the piershead to check whether the ferry is safe enough.

Maya with the intuition of a woman was gifted with a rare insight that beat consequitive reasoning. Women have a motherwit that ordinary intelligence cannot explain.

She remonstrated and said that she would not put the family in peril for a meeting with the town leader. The leader could wait. But then mates are obstinate and they make it a matter of life and death in the teeth of daylight rationality.

Maya yielded and thought the family was stronger than any natural calamity for it mattered beyond all other interests.

It was time to plunge the oar into the river which was gradually ruffled with waves that sighed heavily in the brewing storm.

The children were brave and felt safe in the custody of both parents. The river flowed through a dense forest which howled in the wind. It was dark in certain places and Mr. Jugjeet missed those places which were deep enough to carry the ferry without the keel hitting any rock.

The branches of trees spread like wide arms over the weak ferry which ploughed its way across angry waves that rose threateningly to fill the ferry. The children were told to bale out water as the hold contained more and more of it.

Maya was the first one to express her anger: "I had told you not to venture into such a weather. But you have the responsibility of the family and you must bear us through to safety".

Just at this moment hardly had she finished her sentence when a snake coiling on one of the heavy branches stung Maya on her left arm which she had raised during a tantrum with father Jagjeet. The snake fell into the river after having caused harm to mother Jugjeet. The sting was so sharp that Maya leapt from her seat and the ferry rocked heavily in the troubled waters causing alarm. The children who had dozed off during long periods of fear were briskly awakened by the shrieks of the mother. "What shall we do now?

How far are we from the shore? I am feeling dizzy now. The poison is now mixing with my blood. It will kill me".

In fact her speech was becoming heavy and she complained that she felt numb in her heed. Mr. Jugjeet tied the arm strongly in order to retard the propagation of the poison beyond the point where the sting was.

Mr. Jugjeet oared frantically to reach the shore for help to save Maya. But then the bitterness of a person is known in the face of chaos and nothingness where the categories of right and wrong disappear.

The carping tongue of Maya assailed the confused Jugjeet incessantly.

"What do you want me to do now? I am going to die because you decided to take us across this river on such a night as this. I shall not die alone. We are a family. You are the leader of our group. When one suffers everybody suffers".

It sounded ungrateful to him to protest against the words of a dying person for she was becoming pale, then blue. Her lips thickened and a thin line of froth stuck around her lower lip. All these were signs of looming death.

"How can she exhort me to kill my children when she is dying? Can't she allow us to survive so that everyone may lead his life as prescribed by a divine plan?", Mr.Jugjeet mused.

"Please help me! I am going blind! I can't see anything".

"Maya, please understand. The storm has risen and you are dying. In a few moments the poison will have spread everywhere. Let us live".

"What do you want me to do?"

"While there is still time, accept for the sake of the children to leap into the river because we must save those whom we can".

Death and the approaching clouds of the death make the dying feel lonely. Relating becomes a mockery. The family looks just a temporary rented home and all that binds us while we are alive dissolves. These are frightening moments to those who are uninitiated to the art of dying. Maya could not but cling to the remnants of conscious life and wanted to remain in the midst of the family.

Mr. Jugjeet now faced a defining moment of choice. He had to look after a dying wife while the children needed protection. The wife invoked values of loyalty, solidarity, collective responsibility to embolden the husband to attend to her while the ferry battled against roaring waves.

At this moment the ferry needed a helmsman who could guide it through troubled paths of the river.

But at the same time the ferryman could not take care of both wife and children. They witnessed the trauma of a dying mother while the river splashed  angry waves against the ferry.

The face of Maya gave the appearance of a cadaver pale and rigid with the woodenness of death. And yet Mr. Jugjeet was caught in a maelstrom of doubt. Should he throw the corpse of Maya into the river and take care of his children or should  he show loyalty to her till the end?

Jugjeet remembered the words of Maya: "Either we all or none of us".

This was loyalty for her - a capacity for selfextinction in the heart of crisis. This is how she interpreted marriage and the family.

The town was gradually tracing its contours with street lights. The children needed to have the chance to serve when they grew up, Jujeet's reason counseled. But everyone had to die together or live together, Maya had insisted till death. Jugjeet was confused and dragged the rest of his family to perdition.

Many years have elapsed since the town found the dead bodies of the Jugjeet family carried by the waves to the moorshead. No one has survived to tell the tale of misjudged loyalty.

Maya was caught in her religion of self-worship and felt loyalty meant solidarity of all through thick and thin. Her death should spell the death of all.

Jugjeet died confounded carrying innocent children in the wake of his loyalty.