Don’t know about you but we find the name Nachiketa ek dum fascinating and we simply had to search for its origin. Look what we found!
The Kathoponishad narrates a story, the protagonist of which is a young Brahmin boy named Nachiketa.
On seeing a king perform a false sacrifice by giving away his useless belongings, Nachiketa experiences a kind of awakening. He realizes that all this is pretence and what one needs to possess is shradhha towards what one must do. Immediately, he realizes he is different from the ordinary people around him. The boy tells himself: "I am superior to many, inferior to a few, but nowhere am I the last, I can do something worthwhile." And as his boldness increases, he becomes determined to solve a problem that has been persisting in his mind for long, that of death.
He pesters his father for the answer and an irritated father tells him that the answer could be given only by going to the house of Death. And to the house of Death, the young boy goes. Yama, The Lord of Death, first amused, then He gets angry, then He offers Nachiketa any wealth the latter desires to possess if he desists from asking that one question- What is death?
But the young boy's shradhha is intense. He persists in his quest for the Truth, he waits for three days at the entrance of the kingdom of Death, without food and sleep. Yama relents and teaches the boy the unknowable Truth- a question to which only He knows the answer. And the boy returned from where no man had returned before.
Here and now, we have another Nachiketa. He is Flight Lieutenant, and he flew to the skies, too , to solve his, and the Nation's Problem.-that of the Death and the destruction of Pakistani backed Mercenaries who had infiltrated into India. This Nachiketa too went to the kingdom of death. And this Nachiketa too had returned from Death. Who doubts that he has seen death from such close quarters? Thanks for Living up to your name, Fl. Lt. Nachiketa.
By S. Raghotham in The Backbeat section, Times of India, June 7th 1999.
