Remember the Titans
The thing that I am going to write has nothing to do with the Movie, so all Denzel Washington fans don’t be disappointed. Instead of that I will tell you another story which every child learns as they grow up in Orissa. Still I believe there are few Oriyas who might have never heard of it.
Recently I went to visit my sister at Puri. As usual I felt restless after a while and wanted to visit some place. The proposal came immediately from my father to go to Konark. We left in a while to see the sunset over the Sun Temple. I don’t even remember how many times I have been to the place, but this time there was something special. After traveling in a foreign country, seeing some real good things will make you appreciate how good it is to have a monument like “Black Pagoda” near your home. Apart from that there was greed to get few good snaps also.
After taking few photographs, suddenly the story of “Dharmapada” (meaning: Someone who chooses the right path) came to mind, which I didn’t try to remember for last 15years or more. “Dharmapada” was son of “Bisu Maharana”, the chief architect of the temple. The king of that time was “Langula Narasimha Deva”, who hired Bisu Maharana and his twelve hundred carpenters to make the temple on the middle of the sea. The temple took 12 years to complete. The completion was supposed to happen after keeping a giant magnet on the top. The 1200 carpenters were unable to do it. The King gave them the ultimatum. Dharmapada was only one year old when his father left the house. Twelve years have passed by and Dharma mastered all the carpentry by the time. When he heard the trouble of his father, he set off to help him. After arriving he did something which twelve hundred skilled people couldn’t do. He completed the chuda (top) of the temple.
Well the story didn’t end happily. When his father learnt what his son has done, he was happy beyond imagination. This didn’t last long as he realized, king will hang all the carpenters if he will learn that a boy of 12years old has done something which most others were not able to do it. He ordered his son to jump from the temple top into the sea to save his fellow workers.
The story is not a fable, it’s a historical fact and its root lies during the time when our culture was at pick and people sacrificed their son for a better cause and twelve year old boy died saving twelve hundreed people. Well, we can do one thing and that is being proud of the culture to which we belong. It is just a though.
