Eklavya: Not the movie

Continuing from the thoughts in my previous post, another thing which is crippling the creativity among us is we only learn what we have been taught, without using our intelligence. Irony is, we are also taught that we have a wonderful analytical brain unmatched in any other living species. Don't know who to blame, the education system, which is fit to produce only clerks, the society, where we have always been taught it's not polite to question your elders or ourselves, who chose to believe whatever we have been taught and decided not to question.

I have asked this question to many people in recent past, what is the most important thing you learn from the Eklavya story that has been told to us plenty of times as a kid and probably as a grown up too. The usual answers I got are, respect your teacher, if you respect your teacher you can even learn from his statue etc. Some who probably don't understand the question answer, what Dronachaya did was not right and not ethical, Eklavya should not have given in to Drona's demands.

Well, I think the most important thing we learn from the Eklavya story is that, in order to achieve anything the most important thing is the intent to achieve it and and honest effort towards the same. If you have the right intent, you can achieve whatever you want despite not getting the desired environment and support. In order to do so you will be innovative and discover something of your own, which you probably would have never achieved had you given the desired environment and the intent was missing.

Think for once, had Dronacharya accepted Eklavya as a student, all Eklavya would have learned was what Arjun learned. But with the right intent and right effort, he learned some things that he could have never learned, had Dronacharya actually been his teacher (remember the barking dog incident, that took even Drona by surprise).

I am not saying that this is the best and the only interpretation. I am just requesting you all to start thinking beyond what you have been taught and start questioning.

PS: I believe that any literature that we read has been written from the point of view of the author and sometimes has been modified from the point of view of the editor, translator or compiler and but it is written assuming that whoever reads it is an intelligent person and will derive his meaning out of it using the gifted brain he has got.