The Prince of Panthalam


In their ignorance, they said, they needed milk from a tigress...

No one explicitly asked the twelve year old Prince to go and get it, but he volunteered anyway ...

What happened afterwards is glorious history.

He went in to the jungle all alone, got challenged by the Asuric Mahishi, battled that embodiment of adarma, defeated it and then graced it with satva qualities.

Just as his brother Sri Subramanya did after winning against the triad of Asuric forces, Padmasura, Tarakasura and Singamukha.

Sri Muruga/Subramanya converted the energy of Asuratva to pure Satva, his eternal dwaja and vahana .

The victorious Prince of Panthalam came out of the jungle not with just one tigress or her milk but with a whole band of tigers, all of them acting like affectionate pet cats around him !

What a sight to behold it must have been!

All this talk of "style" and "coolness" whenever people talk about human idols only remind me of his style.

His quiet strength, his focus, his steadfastness, his absolute fearlessness and best of all, his vairagya /tapas .

After all the happenings , the Prince of yogis went away to perform tapas in an auspicious location in the jungle and he has been in tapas ever since.

For your sake, my sake and  for our sakes.

The least we can do is to honor his wishes.

To his true bhaktas,  irrespective of gender or social status, his wishes are  but a set of commands that we'd follow gladly.

We bow to every kind of order in our everyday/ loukika lives.

That's fine.

But while we are doing that for our own sakes, taking care also to follow his orders would only bring us and our future generations immense good.

The age of Kali is dark and Asuric tendencies don't have a specific  form as it was in the case of the three previous yugas.

The Asuric tendencies , instead, choose to reside in human minds!

But, we are incurable optimists, so we will remind ourselves of Sri Hari bhaktha Poonthanam Namboodiri's words about the age of Kali being the best of all yugas.

No pain, no need for tapas on fire, but just the adherence to  basic niyamas for worship and namasmaranam would bring immense gains in the Kali yuga. 

 It's disheartening at times, but if we carry on with shraddha in our tradition, we'd gain strength along the way.

This post isn't for those who think the yatra to his abode is some kind of trekking.

This is for those of us who keep him in our hearts.

Those of us who worship him won't go to his holy shrine until we are able to follow all his wishes in that regard.

So, what's this post for?

It's a tonic,my friend, and you may feel better after taking it just as I myself felt just some time ago.

I drank a little of this tonic myself when I saw the above image
( from the internet) today and decided to share some thoughts with it.

May the Prince of Panthalam guide us all in the path of dharma so that we attain the other three purusharthas through  dharmik living.

Swamiye Saranam Ayyappa.
🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

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