Picnic and Hospitality!

The event I am going to narrate may be a trivial one, but it had a lasting impact on me! Last Sunday we were going on a departmental picnic. Half way to the spot few guys got a call of nature and stopped the bus. Its common here to just release yourself in any wide-open area. So it was no new thing. However, I marked that after those two guys many more followed the trend. I got curious and went out to follow the trend as well. Coming out, I was surprised to mark that there was no sweet wide open space in sight! So I just followed the flow of familiar faces. That took me to a narrow lane with houses on both the sides. I felt a bit scared! Finally I asked one guy where is the wide-open space? He directed me to a house! I felt very awkward. He understood and told me to use the lavatory of one of the houses! I was quite surprised, and to check it myself I ventured in. To my surprise no one told me anything. The house-owner, who was brushing teeth, just tried to smile at me with his mouth full of froth! I released myself and came back. All through I was wandering what type of people these are! Allowing a bunch of stranger to use your lavatory is something which one can never hope to come across in any country. And in the Indian-heartland this issue becomes really impossible because of caste-issues. But here is a corner of my country where people are still open enough to open their lavatories to complete strangers!!
(PS: A complete stranger is one whom you may expect to meet never again in the future!)

Kanhai painki gAi-guhAla

This is a often cited adage by my father, which literally mean "the cow-shade is because of Kanha". The milieu is from the epic Mahabharata. Mother Yasoda wants the baby Krishna to be fed well and hence she is trying to maintain a good cow-shade with well-looked-after cows. But in her earnestness to maintain the cows properly she sometimes forgets to look after the baby Krishna! So this line tries to remind the Mother that all this cows and cow-shade is to serve Krishna!

In life many a times, we get too involved in some trivia, get tensed and worked out. And in this process we tend to forget the reason for which we might be doing the particular work. Thinking of the cause mostly calms us down and gives us new insights!

For example, the man working hard day and night to make enough money for his family many times forgets the cause for which he is working. And he then tends to give the minimum time to his family!

Or, lets say the lover who is trying to fight the society to get his love. Sometimes he gets so involved in the process of fighting for a tomorrow that he forgets to think about his beloved in the present...