Raksha Bandhan: A celebration of all bonds that matter

New Indian Express

2 days ago

Saturday, August 9, is the festival of Raksha Bandhan, and, as ever, I find its deeper implications fascinating. The origin story goes that Indra, king of the celestials, had to fight big, bad Vritra, a powerful negative force who wanted to take over and rule the world. Indra, as the leader of the celestials, was duty-bound to fight him to protect the universe. He fought very hard, to the point of fighting just for survival, but kept being bested.
Rishi Dadhichi, an ardent devotee of Lord Shiva, had a body suffused with extraordinary spiritual power that could manifest as physical strength. The gods asked him to surrender his body so that Indra could fashion a weapon from his bones. Dadhichi gladly did so and sat down to meditate on Lord Shiva, who, the belief goes, is the 'prana' or breath that keeps us alive, the only barrier between life and death. Rishi Dadhichi sent himself into samadhi, a state of deep concentration and inner withdrawal, through which he willed his breath to leave his body.
Indra thus obtained his Vajra or thunderbolt from Rishi Dadhichi's bones. But that alone was not enough. Indra's inner spirit had to be made strong again after the psychological damage caused by repeatedly losing to Vritra. Indra's wife, Shachi Devi, then tied a thread that she had prayed over on his fighting wrist. In the next battle, when he felt that he was going under, the sight of that thread gave him back his fighting spirit, and he made an enormous effort, drawing on every last bit of his strength and will to win. He managed to vanquish Vritra once and for all. He succeeded in saving the world, his, and ours, from a cruel, dangerous would-be tyrant. Shachi Devi became known thereafter as 'Indrashakti Shachi'. This, I discovered later, was the official name given to one of the queens of Thailand in the 20th century.