Desire can take hold of your life, and dominate it to such an extent, that nothing else seems important, except the object of desire. Until what is desired is attained, the person is unable to think of anything else.
There is a Sanskrit verse, which begins with the line ‘adarsane darsana mAtra kAma’, which means that something not seen, when seen for the first time, becomes a desired object.
When a person ardently desirous of attaining something finds hurdles in his path, he may not even hesitate to use unfair or even wicked means to clear the obstacles in his path. Having taken possession of what he desired and having enjoyed it, his sense of possession becomes stronger. Desire is a trap from which we cannot come out easily, said Kidambi Narayanan, in a discourse.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says that our desires depend on the company we keep, for bad company can lead us astray. But even those who have controlled their senses, can fall prey to desire, if they are not careful. That is what happened in the case of Jatabharata.
He was doing penance on the banks of a river, when a deer frightened by the roar of a lion, plunged into the river, gave birth and died. The sage took pity on the fawn, and rescued it. It was only proper that he should save it. But he went beyond that. He could have handed it over to someone who would have cared for it. Instead, he became so fond of the deer, that he took it to his ashram. He spent every moment of his time thinking about the deer, and died not with thoughts of God, but with thoughts of his deer.
So all his penance did not help him conquer attachment to a deer. Control of the mind is not easy, and even when achieved, it can be lost. That is the moral of Jatabharata’s story.
