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Exceptional devotion

CHENNAI: Among the exceptional devotees highlighted in the Bhagavata Purana, Dhruva and Prahlada were remarkable as they were children when they realised God. While the Lord incarnated in a man-lion form (Narasimha) to substantiate the avowed statement of Prahlada that He was all-pervasive, in the case of Dhruva He blessed him with the vision of His beatific form and bequeathed immortal glory on him to recompense his devotion to Him.

In their discourse on the Narayaneeyam, Damal Sri Ramakrishnan and Srimathi Perundevi Seshadri said devotion to God countered the negative tendencies in the mind like jealousy and enabled the devotee to stay rooted to Dharma with fortitude. The two wives of King Uttanapada illustrate the difference between a worldly and a devout person. Dhruva’s mother Suniti was a personification of patience for she accepted her situation as her destiny and remained devoted to God even though her husband, who was the king, had not extended even a modicum of the royal privileges to her and her child that was their due. And, she tried her best not to allow her plight to affect her child’s mind. Suruchi, on the other hand, was so jealous that she ensured that the king did not have any access to Dhruva lest his love for him would make him change his mind.

One day when Dhruva saw Suruchi’s son Uttama seated on his father’s lap and tried to climb onto his lap, he was severely chided by his step-mother. Stung, he went crying to his mother, his father’s silence hurting the five-year-old child more than his step-mother’s taunts. She had told him that he did not deserve it as he was not born to her and had advised him to propitiate the Supreme Person through austere penance and seek rebirth as her child.

After listening to her sobbing child, Suniti lifted him up and consoled him. She did not speak ill of Suruchi and advised Dhruva not to entertain any evil thought about anyone because one had to reap the fruit of one’s Karma. She asked him to seek refuge in God. But, she had not bargained that such a young child would take it so seriously for he at once sallied forth to the forest to do penance with determination.

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