SHIKSHA AND DIKSHA

Shiksha and Diksha

khaliqur Rahman

Shiksha and Diksha were twins. They looked alike all right, but in life they moved in different directions. Their goal, though, was more or less the same, as perhaps is everybody’s, a successful life.

Shiksha as a child went to school, then to college and university. Diksha didn’t like school bags and books. She told her parents, she wouldn’t go to school. The parents were sensible and good enough to see through her mind. They agreed as they didn’t want to put any extra pressure on her. Shiksha always wanted to become a Somebody, not an Anybody and certainly not like an Everybody. Even as a child, she participated in Fancy Dress Competitions and bagged awards as Saraswati, Sita and Durga. Later, she took to Mock Parliaments. In college, she acted as Indira, Uma and Rabri. This make-believe overplay became her attitude in life. Her degrees - BSc, MA, PhD- were like Indira, Uma and Rabri in her; good enough to show, better still for accolades but in reality, Diksha knew, Shiksha was never a good student. Shiksha herself had often told Diksha how she cheated in the exams and how cleverly she flirted with the important men to get her PhD.

Shiksha, unlike Diksha, has had poor health since childhood. Poor Shiksha always had to go to hospital to be able to go to school and to college and she always had to go to coaching classes to be able to clear her exams. Shiksha had no time for prayers; neither for sports, nor for exercises. Understandably, she grew (grew?) into a real irritable girl-- and not very long later into an irritating woman.

Diksha spent her time with her mother. She watched her, cooking, washing and doing the chores. Watching led her to doing, as it always does. Soon, she was as good as her mother!

Diksha spent her time with her father and her friends, too. She learnt quite a lot from them as well. She had enough time to pray with either mother or father or both. And, she had time to run around and play with her friends. Not unexpectedly, she developed into an attractive girl and later into a still more attractive woman after she got married. The suitable boy picked Diksha much earlier than Shiksha hooked her unsuitable boy for an unarranged marriage.

Shiksha is childless, whereas Diksha has a boy and a girl. Diksha thinks she has given her husband someone like him. And, her husband thinks he has given Diksha someone like her.

Like her degrees, Shiksha is trying to manage motherhood through a test-tube, and expecting a baby-girl, who Diksha thinks, Shiksha should call Pratiksha, or perhaps, Bhiksha.

Diksha also thinks that Dikshant Samaroh should better be called Shikshant Samaroh because that invariably marks the end of Shiksha.