Boons and Curses……

A Boon (Vardhaan) is a blessing received as an answer to a request in contrast to a Curse (Shraap) which means punishment for bad deed/s. The concept of Boons and Curses is found in old stories — mostly in mythology, be it Greek, Roman, Celtic, Mediterranean or Hinduism.

Curses and Boons are an integral part of all mythologies. Anyone can get a boon from the Gods by doing penance (tapasya). Likewise, if a sage or God gets angry, you may be cursed. Mostly, demons do penance for immortality, which is obviously unattainable. So, often they are given the choice to pick the method of their death.

As per our epics, Sage Durvasa was known to be a person, who freely cursed while Karna from Mahabharata was considered the most cursed person. Among all the boons granted, the most famous one is Lord Shiva’s boon to his son Vinayak (Ganpati) that he would always be worshipped before anyone else (prathampujya).

There are more than 50 boons and curses falling in different categories.

Boons which ended in deaths

• Dashrath’s boon to Kaikeyi led his favorite son Ram to exile for 14 years and to his (Dasrath’s) own death.
• Brahma’s boon to Meghnath to be invincible if he worshipped his kuldevi — Nikumbha before any war, led to his death when Lakshman interrupted him during his worship.
• Basmasur was blessed with a boon that a person would turn into ashes if Basmasur kept his hand on the person’s head. He tried to use the said boon on Lord Shiva. Lord Vishnu came to his rescue in Mohini avatar and tricked Basmasur so that he kept the hand on his own head causing his own death.
• When Tarkasur asked for immortality, Lord Shiva refused to grant this boon. Knowing that Shiva was mourning the death of his wife — Sati and may not marry again, he asked him to grant a boon that only Shiva’s son could kill him. Later when Shiva and Parvati marry, Kartikeya — their son killed Tarkasur.

Boons which led to Curses — King Shantanu ’s boon to his son Devvrath, that he could choose the day and time of his death (Ichamrityu vardhaan) turned into a curse for him. He lived for more than a century and witnessed the death of all his nears and dears during the war of Kurukshetra.

Curses which led to Boons — Sage Gautam, doubting her infidelity — cursed his wife Ahalya to turn into stone and Indra to get a thousand vaginas (Sahastrayoni) on his body due to his lustful behavior, which later on turned into a thousand eyes. Hence Lord Indra is called the one with a thousand eyes.

Curses to own family members:

• Some of Lord Krishna’s junior wives were infatuated with his son Samba. One amongst them, Nandini, disguised herself as Samba’s wife and embraced him. For this incest, Krishna cursed his own son to be inflicted with leprosy and that his wives to be kidnapped by robbers after his death.
• Sage Shukracharya cursed his son-in-law, King Yayati — When Shukracharya found about the infidelity of his daughter’s husband he cursed that he would lose his youth and become old forever.
• Chandradev (Moon) was married to twenty-seven daughters of Prajapati Daksha but Chandradev loved Rohini the most. When Daksha found out that his other daughters were not as happy as Rohini, he cursed his son-in-law to deteriorate and die, but then later, was saved by Lord Shiva’s intervention.

Even the most powerful warriors and heroes of epics were cursed.

• After losing all hundred sons in the Mahabharata war, Gandhari cursed Krishna that his clan too would be destroyed by fighting amongst themselves.
• When Ram killed the monkey king Vali, his grieving wife Tara cursed Ram that he would be separated from his wife again.
• When Arjun rejected Urvashi, the apsara from Indra’s court, he was cursed by her to turn into an eunuch.
• Hanumana was mischievous in his childhood. So some sages gave him a curse that he would forget all his powers until someone reminded him of them.

Curses which turned out to be a boon at a later stage — Vanars Naal and Neel were cursed by the sages that whatever they threw in the water would never drown. While rescuing Sita, Ram had to cross the sea with his army of monkeys. At that moment, this curse to the two brothers turned out to be very useful as they helped build a floating bridge of more than a thousand kms.

The biggest boon asked hundreds of years ago was the one asked by King Bhagirath of the Raghu clan. He went through multiple layers of penance for different gods and ultimately reached out to Lord Shiva and asked him to release Ganga so that his forefathers could attain salvation. Even today, humankind is benefiting from this boon.

I was wondering if it was possible for us to burn someone into ashes in a second or turn someone into stone in the blink of an eye. The answer was an emphatic NO. Then again, we too do many things in a matter of seconds. Don’t we?

I talk to my sister via video calling in the USA by pressing a button on my cell phone. I can arrange a meeting of five people sitting in different cities, even countries for that matter, again by the click of a button. I can fly across the sea and reach another continent in a few hours. Are these not boons?, I ask.

Advanced medical facilities help to detect a deadly disease at a very early stage so that it could be cured. Transplantation of organs, be it a liver, kidney or even a heart, has taken us to the highest levels of achievement in medical science.

Likewise, Life’s rights and wrongs are like boons and curses. We believe that a person who gets everything in life must have been granted some boon in his previous birth.

On the other hand, someone who craves even for the basic things in life may have been cursed by a sage or a God.

Can we too turn some of our curses in boons like the sages or the gods did?

What do you think is the biggest boon you have got in your life?

And which curse are you going to turn into a boon?