The Vali - Sugreeva encounter

My most pressing priority currently is to discover ways to bring peace between my two children who closely resemble Vali and Sugriva in both countenance and compatibility. Often lost for a clever statement to arrest their ferocious battles I merely say, “call for me only if there is bloodshed.”  Having grown  up in  a huge  joint family,  I have  watched more sibling fights than TV and now in my home most sibling fights happen   over   TV.     Indeed   there   is   a   mysterious   (cosmic)   cable connection between sibling brawls and TV.  (A case in point is the famous TV channel sibling fight in Tamil Nadu).Adults   in   my   house   have   always   responded   (what   I   now understand   as)   queerly   to   sibling   brawls.       The   Cheenu   and Ramsubbu   combat   and   how   my   grandmother   sorted   the   fight between her sons is legend in our family.  Cheenu had called Ramsubbu “silk and golden sister” (Pattakka-Bangarakka) because of his smooth and fair countenance and in response   Ramsubbu   had   called   Cheenu   a   “plucked   chicken” because the barber in a (summer) heat of inspiration had shaved all but Cheenu’s nose hair. The insinuations sufficiently roused the alpha male in both.  Many fisticuffs, shoulder-shoulder deadlocks and   fighter   kicks   later   the   brothers   end   up   on   top   of   the Marundeeswarar temple tank steps and before long the brothers are rolling down the  steps  towards  the  water beautiful  with  lotuses above and dangerous with gnarled stalks below.  My grandmother who was filling water at the tank sees her sons tumble and instead of intervening, she sets the pot down and begins a mournful song on the sorrow of having to watch her own children fight with each other.  Watching the boys accelerate faster and faster towards the water, my grandmom apparently even adjusted the song’s tempo to their   descent   and   as   the   song   reached   a   kind   of   crescendo musically   and   lyrically   describing   the   slaying   of   Vali,   the archetypal   big   bad   brother   my   grandmother   began   clapping   in frenzy. “Sita, shut up. Cheenu is in water,” someone shouted and pulled the boy by hair and dragged him out of the water, lotus, stalks et al. 

As if her pathetic tactic was not sufficient, my grandmom ran up to the nearly drowned boy and said, “My god. Look at you. Wet and shivering like a plucked chicken,” That was sufficient for silk and golden sister to guffaw so loudly that it set off plucked chicken to pounce on him for a fresh-from-tank fight all over again.My grandfather was a little less poetic in his peacemaking attempt. Burdened with seven boys and three girls, there was never a “non-fighting” moment in the house. “Stop   fighting   or   I   shall   bang   my   head   against   the   wall!”   My grandfather used to cough above the din. I used to be torn between the two rooms like how my children are torn between two channels now. If only there were ad fillers.  Whenever my father heard fighting sounds and threats like “don’t even come for my funeral, I would die a second time seeing your face,” he would come around and tell my brother and me-  “Why are you people warring blandly with words? You…. pick up the sickle. And you big brother, bring the knife. Let’s see some real bloodshed.” My father in his prime had staged some very superb and very real sibling fights.  So much so one brother of his came in only for his funeral. His other brother did better. He never came (ever). The Good Samaritan probably did not want my dad to die a second time!As I  plod  through  mythologies   to find  a  “moral story”   for  my children, all I am encountering is a Ganesha and a Karthikeya, an Abel and  a Cain, a Vali and a Sugriva- siblings  who quarreled cheaply   despite   being   children   of   God.   In   addition,   faithful brothers like Lakshmana and Pandavas are shown getting exile in forest as reward while Ravana had all his ten heads chopped for avenging   his sister  Surpanaka.       Above  all stands   the   story   of Krsna in his Pandavadhootha aspect where he fails miserably in the mission of bringing peace between Kauravas and Pandavas. More importantly he was made to sit on a shaky chair with a viper pit below as he tried to hold the peace talks. There lies the moral for me. “Why try to bring peace between siblings (that is not meant to be) and why risk getting your bottom burnt?”