Moral; how do we cross the river?

Recently I happened to see Ravi’s post on moral of the story. He has a very interesting analysis on moral. Makes everyone think, that there are alternate ways to get out of the same problem, not though morally correct for all.

I was looking at the recent activities happening on the moral policing. It’s quite gripping experience, women beaten up for going to pub. Also lovers beaten up at park by police as it’s considered not moral by the society.

Short story:
Many have heard this story I think. This used to be the story in our 4th grade curriculum. Please ignore the story if you have already heard it.

Rama is a farmer by profession. He is very well respected hard working farmer in the village consisting of a few houses. Rama daily goes to the field at 6 in the morning after his early morning ragi malt drink (there used to no breakfast those days). Since Rama as farmer grows only wheat, he usually bought ragi from market fair and his wife would cook the ragi malt for him and his sons Lava and Kusha.

Rama has been in this village since birth, he is like most of the folks in the village who followed many rules and regulations passed on from generations. The village had a group of people who summoned the defaulters and punish them according to their wit. There was no authority other than the wise group of people to maintain law and order in the village. Rama was later included as one of the wise people as he followed them very sincerely.

One day Rama along with his 13 year old son Kusha left to the fair that happens at distant place, they had to walk along for a day to reach the place where they bought the ragi for their daily needs. As the journey was long, Rama hired a donkey as the traveling means. The donkey was strong enough to carry one person astride. Rama made Kusha ride on the donkey as he walked along easing Kusha’s efforts of walking. A wise man traveling in the opposite direction saw this and said “It’s not correct of the young son who is energetic to ride the donkey while his father walked.”

Kusha was a good son, he realized his mistake, and he made his father ride the donkey while he walked along. A set of wise people crossed them commented “It’s not correct for the energetic father to ride the donkey while the poor son walked along. Rama was shocked by this comment; he got down and both walked along the donkey, as another passerby commented, “how foolish of them as one of them could ride donkey”, Rama was in dilemma now, he didn’t’ know what to do.

Then after thinking for moment, they decided that both father and son would carry the donkey while tying the legs along a log making the donkey up side down. While they were crossing over a bridge the donkey panicked and started moving, father and son couldn’t hold on to it as the donkey fell into the river below.

Rama realized his mistake; he thought he shouldn’t have listened to any of them as he couldn’t practically please all. Life is the same; there are so many moral police out there to point out your mistakes and correct you. Now what’s correct? How will we cross this river?