Questioning Sense
by Thota
Srinivas
Every parent’s nightmare when it comes to tackling
the children is to either answer or find the answer to every question their
kids pose about things they perceive every day.
A parent
sees no other option other than diplomatically invalidating it or satiating the
child’s curiosity with some irrelevant or inappropriate answer feeling sure
that the child will never be able to find it out. The child gets the same
experience even at school.
Gradually the child loses his interest to activate
his questioning ability. This consequently deactivates his rational and lateral thinking.
This can further affect the child’s sense of creativity, imagination, logic and enquiry inevitably hindering his learning ability.
Let’s take a peek into a story connected with the
Hindu Mythology, the Ramayana to find out how a doubt assumes significance
which is beyond our limited intelligence sometimes.
It’s so happened that a certain child was pleading
his father to narrate an interesting story. Vexed with the consistent plea by
his son, the father yielded. He wanted to grab this opportunity to instill some
morals, ethics and values and decided to narrate the events from the great epic
‘Ramayana’
Having narrated the story in an interesting way,
the father then began clarifying the doubts his son had about the story. One of
such questions was,‘Why did Lakshman chop off Surpanakha’s nose and ears? He
could have given some other punishment. Why did he choose to chop only her ears
and nose off in such a gruesome way?
The father
became utterly speechless. He too was unaware of the answer. At first he
thought that it was a foolish doubt but then a curiosity crept in and he became
too inquisitive to know the reason behind it .So he consulted various teachers,
professors, knowledgeable persons –Alas! He could not get the answer.
At last he met a religious hermit and posed his
doubt. The hermit said that it was rather an intellectual doubt. And he gave
the reason thus—Surpanakha was not just an ordinary enchantress; she was a
Demon and a monster blessed with exceptional abilities. However she misused her
abilities and qualities and lived by only bringing harm and menace to humans
and other creatures. She would use her abilities to hunt the humans and
animals.
When she went to Lord Rama and proposed him to
marry her, he said that he was already married and she should better carry her
proposal to his brother , Lakshmana.
Unaware of the intolerance Laxmana had towards
demons ,but finding him equally handsome , she asks him to marry her to which he replies:‘ I would certainly marry you , but I vowed myself to marry no ordinary
woman so tell me how unique you are .’
With an ardent hope of convincing him with her
extraordinary skills she says-‘ I am incomparable because I am blessed with unique abilities. I have a very strong
sense of smelling- so strong that I can sense any creature lying hundreds of
metres away. And I do have a strong sense of hearing- so strong that my ears
can catch even the faintest sound made by any creature thousands of feet away.’
Then Lakshman thought : ‘ A woman with such beastly abilities cannot certainly be a human. She is , beyond doubt,a demon in the disguise of a woman. If I let her go with such dreadful qualities, she can cause harm to many other creatures.’
Thinking thus he chopped off her nose and ears without
giving her a second to realize what’s happening to her. This paves way to the
abduction of Sita and finally the death of Ravana.
Justifying the act of Lakshmana, what we can
deduce is that we need to nurture qualities and skills within ourselves which can
only bring good to others but not harm. If our skills and abilities do good to
others then they will certainly do and bring good to us as well. And such
qualities are called as virtues. Lord Rama was a man of Virtues which led him
to victory and divine eternity while Ravana was a man of Vices which led him to
defeat and eternal damnation.
Isn’t this quite interesting to know that a simple
doubt posed by a small child carried an intellectual explanation and reason
behind it?
So, no doubt can be small or big or foolish or great.
A doubt is a doubt. And every doubt about anything carries information worth
this Universe.
Only an ignorant person can deride a doubt. After
all only those who think logically or laterally get the doubts. And posing
doubts is a sign of having good attention and concentration levels.
Children need to be
trained to question, probe and explore anything that puzzles them. This is one
of the features of parenting and teaching as well. Most of the teachers and
parents fail to answer the simplest of the simple questions posed by the kids. Lacking
the patience to either answer or probe into the questions posed by the kids, some
of them even resort to rebuking the children and calling them as ‘annoying
brats’ to discourage them from questioning.
Let us not
nip away the growing sense of enquiry in the children in its budding stage.
Children need a rational mind to be decisive, independent, courageous, updated
and shrewd.
Now we need to question ourselves. Are we
fostering this sense or squashing it even before it develops!?