The Five Pandavas

1. Most of the time, knowing less is better than knowing everything. The person who learns too much before the right time and proper age—that person is wise. Perhaps they've received some God-given gifts, or through life's varied experiences or their own efforts, they've come to know much. Holding onto such knowledge is an enormously difficult thing. Among those who learn too much ahead of their years, only about one percent go on to become someone significant later. The rest are lost under the weight of knowledge. The greatest virtue of a wise person is knowing how to carry themselves. Bearing the burden of knowledge is truly, truly hard work. But those one percent who do grow great—they become enormously, enormously great, conspicuously great people. So great that they're bound to catch your eye! Not everyone can handle the shock of receiving too much too early in life. Only some can. Those who can—their power becomes quite clearly visible to you and me.

2. According to our society's rules, when a father dies, the child becomes an orphan. But the real truth is this: a child becomes an orphan when the mother dies. When a mother dies, there's truly no one left to care for the child properly. The father simply remarries easily enough. And how much a stepmother cares for children born of the previous wife's womb—well, we see that clearly enough. A woman's irresistible pull toward her own womb, that's an incredibly mysterious magical bond. Nothing else in the world can compare to it.

3. Sex is such a thing that when two people in a true loving relationship engage in it, they come close to heaven itself. But it's also true that love isn't mandatory for sex. How pleasurable loveless sex is—on this, various sages hold various opinions. I won't enter that debate in this piece. But one thing I can say with certainty: there's no more heinous crime than having sex with someone you don't love while repeatedly telling them you do. Sex arising from attraction, from fulfilling needs, or for any other reason based on mutual consent is nothing wrong at all—whether or not there's a loving relationship between the two. But sex in the name of love—nothing is more self-loathing than this. Those who do such things—I don't understand how they can stand before a mirror. Their mental difference from street dogs is minimal indeed. How is this really different from rape? Real men never rape; actually, they don't need to.

4. One of the world's most wondrous places is the barber shop or salon. There's no subject on earth that doesn't get discussed there. I'm talking about the salons scattered around the streets. They know a great deal about many people, and they spread all that knowledge around, painting it with all the colors of their imagination. But it's also true that they know many people's secrets. Stories that have no existence whatsoever—they confidently turn into someone or other's secret tales. Don't believe it? You can go test it out at those shops. The same is true of roadside tea stalls. Do you know why people have gone practically mad to visit tea shops during this lockdown? The addiction to gossiping about others is a mighty addiction indeed. Keeping yourself away from it for too long is quite difficult. Those without jobs, when they become unemployed—those salon and tea shop folks are the most unemployed of the unemployed!

5. From a place of honesty or sincere friendship, you speak a harsh truth or two face-to-face with a loved one—something that might be quite a small matter—and you'll be in trouble for life; yet if you always tell your loved ones the sweet lies they prefer to hear, even while committing all sorts of major crimes, you'll never be caught in their eyes your whole life. Hypocritical and deceitful people can live well both at home and abroad, in both places. In this world, falsehood and pretense reign supreme, so hypocrites are popular and successful here. The more lies, the more happiness, the more trust! The more truth, the more unhappiness, the more distrust. Alas, what a life this is!