In the previous episode, we had witnessed how Arjuna emerged as Guru Dhronaachaarya’s most important student during the tenure of education. Guru Dhronaachaarya had his personal agenda – To seek revenge against King Drupada for allegedly insulting him by not honoring his word. Guru Dhronaachaarya had pledged revenge against King Drupada and when he was teaching these Paandava and Kaurava children, he was on the constant lookout for someone who could potentially challenge King Drupada in war. Eventually, Arjuna stood up for the challenge and with that, Guru Dhronaachaarya was elated beyond words! Therefore, he took special care of Arjuna and trained him extremely well in terms of employing the bow and arrow in warfare. Moreover, he taught Arjuna certain other smart techniques that many might not know, when it comes to warfare. Eevntually Arjuna was getting more attention than anyone else in the school, which irked Ashwatthaama. Ashwatthaama, being the son of Guru Dhronaachaarya felt bad that he was not getting due attention from his father, but someone called Arjuna is getting all the due attention.
Eventually, Guru Dhronaachaarya also realized this, and slowly because of the “Putra-Vaatsalya”, he started drifting towards Ashwatthaama. Guru Dhornaachaarya was however smart in executing this – He used to ask the children to go to the river bank to get a pot of water. The pots that the other children were given, had a very small mouth. Whereas, the pot that Ashwatthaama was given, had a bigger mouth. What does this mean? Ashwatthaama could fill his pot easily and quickly with water and bring it to Guru Dhronaachaarya, whereas the other children took some more time to fill up their pots – Because the mouth of their pots were very small. Hence, Ashwatthaama was the first to bring the full pot of water, and within the time that others come with their pots, Guru Dhronaachaarya educated Ashwatthaama with some secret lessons, which he did not teach the others!
We can imagine here, how brilliant Ashwatthaama was! If he has to learn some smart secret lessons within the time that the others come there with their pots, he must be someone who was extremely alert and sharp, isn’t it? This was happening for a few days and nobody really understood this trick that the father and son were playing. This was outright partiality that Guru Dhronaachaarya was showing towards his students and this is the second major “Adharma” that was happening as part of the “Mahabhaarata” story! We’ve already witnessed the first major “Adharma” wherein different people have started conspiring against each other even at a young age, and now even a “Guru” is acting differently to different students, especially when it comes to his own son. Now this is where we’ve to learn our lesson – As a Guru, one should never treat one student over the other, irrespective of whether that student is his / her son or daughter or family relative or anyone. A Guru should treat all students equally and should inculcate the education in all students in a fair manner. There should not be any partiality between students. This is exactly where Guru Dhronaachaarya went wrong! As he was giving some “special attention” secretively to his son over others, this was something that he could have avoided.
Moving on, as days and months progressed, this saga continued! Ashwatthaama was getting some secretive lessons day in and day out! However, there was one student who spotted this happening on a daily basis! That student was none other than Arjuna himself! If Ashwatthaama was smart, Arjuna was ten times smarter than him! He somehow observed Ashwatthaama going faster to Guru Dhronaachaarya than the others! Now what did Arjuna do? How did he counter Ashwathhaama’s smartness? Let’s wait till the next episode to find out! Stay tuned! 🙂
The Indian Dharma 