No Grapes, Sugarcane

ದ್ರಾಕ್ಷಿ ರಸವೇನಲ್ಲ ಜೀವನದ ತಿರುಳರ್ಗಮ್ |
ಇಕ್ಷು ದಂಡದವೊಲದು ಕಷ್ಟ ಭೋಜನವೆ ||
ದಕ್ಷತೆಯಿನಿಡಿಯುವಂಗೊಂದೆರಡು ಗುಟುಕು ರಸ |
ಮಾಕ್ಷಿಕರು ಮಿಕ್ಕೆಲ್ಲ ಮಂಕುತಿಮ್ಮ ||

What a wonderful analogy! Life is not like bunch of seedless grapes that can be effortlessly squeezed to extract the juice out, but is like a sugarcane that has to be run through a grinding. Even a baby can squeeze juice out of a grape, but not even the so called expert can chew the juice out from a sugarcane. One needs to chew a lot of fiber to get to the juice and it pains the teeth or the arms (depending on whether you chew it or grind it). There are machines these days to squeeze a sugarcane, but even that needs some investment. These days someone else can extract the juice for you, but that does not happen in real life, where we need to squeeze it ourselves. So nothing comes easy, as some say. Even to gather two drops of the juice one needs to invest the right amount of effort. But the effort to squeeze out the juice will not just give the juice but a lot of what appears to be waste.

While reading this verse, I was thinking of the saagara manthana from our puraaNas; demigods and raakshasas trying to extract the primordial, immortalizing nectar. It had to be churned using a mountain, and it resulted in enormous derivatives including poison, but it had to be done.

So, there is nectar within each of us, but it needs diligence to extract the best out of it. But, we are all looking for easy ways out of it, easy money, easy life, and hence fail to extract even 2 drops out of the abundant juice stored within us. We store enormous potential that remains trapped and untapped because of our indolent nature.

Hare Krishna.
Shri KrishaarpaNam.