Dare to be free, dare to go as far as your thoughts lead,” these inspirational words are of Swami Vivekananda, A MAN WITH MISSION.
This lockdown helped us to do a lot of things which we couldn’t do in our pre-covid life. One thing that I too started, was reading books, which turned out to be my best friends. In the lockdown, I read the book named ESSENTIAL OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA. The book depicted Swami Vivekananda's life. Swami Vivekananda was born on 12 January 1863, with the name Narendranath, he used to be a loving child in his childhood days.
There was an instance in the book, Swami Vivekananda used to take many books from his library and in 3-4 days he used to return back when the librarian asked ‘how can you read these many books in 3-4 days?’ Swami Vivekananda said ‘I can read them if you doubt you can ask me questions.’ So did the librarian. He asked the questions and Swami Vivekananda gave the correct answer. The librarian asked ‘how is it possible?’ swami Vivekananda replied ‘sir, I only read the starting line from the paragraph. I understand the whole paragraph.’ This of course astonished the librarian and it even astonished me. Swami Vivekananda's master’s name was Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna was a man with a lot of teachings, he was the one who made Swami Vivekananda into the right path. When Swami Vivekananda became an adult, he went to America to stop Christian missionaries from converting Hindus to Christian. He named this mission “THE MISSION IN WEST''. In America, Swami Vivekananda gave a lot of teachings on Hinduism, Vedanta, and more. This eventually made people realize the importance of Hinduism and gave them respect, in America he got many people as disciples. There was an instance in the book which shows the love of Swami Vivekananda for India and Hinduism, Some people from Christian missionaries were saying bad things about Hinduism and India, Swami Vivekananda said to them ‘if your gonna say more about my Country and religion, I would push you out of this ship right now!’ When Swami Vivekananda was asked he said ‘If anybody says anything bad about your mother, will you be able to bear it? The same thing happened to me, I hope all people think like this.
Swami Vivekananda left earth and went to heaven on 4 July 1902. He was a man who inspired me that we can even do something, he was from a poor family then also he managed to teach his lessons in America. His selflessness, admiring, and love for his country and religion are some of his principles that inspire me to be like him and do good things for the country.
BY- RIDDHIMA ROHATGI