An experience with Honesty

This is an incident that happened with me a few years ago, when I was living in VilleParle.
I used to not believe in miracles and was almost an atheist and a typical easygoing youth in those days. Life was all about money, good clothes, restaurants, sleep, partying with friends and computer games.

It was a Sunday, and as usual a very lazy Sunday which started late in the noon for me coz of a late Saturday night party. I had plans of shopping with my brother in the evening. I was excited.
At around 5pm, me and my bro went to the UTI Bank ATM which was near from our house. Although it was walkable we took our bike. I went in and removed 2,000rs. I kept my wallet into the side pocket of the 3/4th cargos that I was wearing. We came back home to dress up and leave for shopping. And the moment I entered home I realized my wallet is not in my pockets! I was shit scared as it had 2,000 bucks along with 3 debit cards, PAN card, driving license and a mediclaim card. For the first time in my life I had lost something so important !

My bro and I ran down to the parking lot of my building, we checked all inches from the door of my house till the bike. It wasn’t there. My bro took the bike and went ahead to see whether I forgot it at the ATM, I started walking towards the ATM searching it on the road if it had fallen down. After 10 mins we both were looking at each other standing opposite the ATM. I had lost my wallet with 2,000rs. and debit cards worth 100,000rs. There was no chance of somebody picking it, as I was on the bike, it must have fallen down from the side pocket as I sat on the bike. But it was gone. We came back home and for the next hour we spent calling up the bank services to block my cards. The shopping plan had gone for a toss. A nice lazy Sunday was suddenly a bad day for me.

I couldn’t sleep the entire night. “I was cursing myself, how could I be so irresponsible?”
I went to work next morning. Monday blues plus the tension of losing money and wallet. My Maa tried to convince me before went to work, that such things happen and I need to move on. She said one thing “You’re a good person, and good things happen to good people.” This was going through my mind all the time, if I’m good, why did it happened to me? why God does such things to good people, maybe he enjoys troubling happy people…

It was 6pm and almost end of the day at work and my phone rang. It was Maa calling…

“Tujhe wallet milale!!” (“we got your wallet”) Maa told me excitedly. What! How is that possible? Miracle? is it? I couldn’t believe what she was telling. In a city, where people are killing people for money, how can there be someone who would want to return a fat 2,000rs with all the debit cards which can be swiped at any mall for a good luxury? I rushed home excitedly. The story at home was interesting.
A guy found it on the road. But when he saw my picture on the debit card of UTI bank, he realized that the money belongs to some young guy. He called up the bank and asked them to give my address. Bank’s security policy did not give him my address. So he asked the bank officer to call me and ask to collect it from the bank. Bank people instead sent it home with their peon.
Everybody at home including me was excited and curious to meet the person who had honesty of returning back the money and wallet without misusing it. We took his phone no. from the bank officer and called him next morning.
It was a working day for me, so I couldn’t meet him. Maa & dad met him. As what they described, He was an ordinary lower middlclass guy. He had a cross in his necklace, he was follower of Christ. A shabby person, for whom 2,000rs might be an entire week’s earning. My parents thanked him and offered him a gift, he denied it politely. His smile showed his contentment with life.
“When I found this wallet on the road, I saw plenty of money in it. I saw there are many debit cards as well. But when I saw the picture of a young boy on it. The Christian in me told to return it. This doesn’t belong to me, if I don’t return it, the boy who owns it might lose faith in humanity and God.” said him with humbleness.

I really wish I had met that guy. We called him a couple of times after that just to ask how is he doing, we spoke over the phone, but I never got a chance to meet him.

“Good things happen to Good people” remains carved on my mind since then.

Avatarized !

The whole world is talking about Avatar, and by now everyone knows why! Even I want to add my bit, hence this article…

I saw Avatar on the very first day of its release in India. And trust me, watching it on an IMAX huge screen was the best Cinematic experience I ever had in my life. It was mindblowing ! Truly, avatar is a masterpiece that has extended horizons of the Cinema & film industry to far far away than the reach of other contemporary films. Cinema was never so beautiful, exotic, exciting, thrilling, sci-fi yet emotional..blah blah.. that was totally awesome!

Cinema never had such an extensive use of Computer technology before. What James Cameron and the team at WETA digital and other studios involved have created, is incredibly beautiful and flawless. Avatar, in my opinion, is first of its kind which was so easy to watch Sci-Fi movie. Even people who didn’t like science fiction movies before had great fun watching it. I feel it is highly inspired by age-old mythologies like Ramayan and the Bhagvad-Geeta concept of Lord Krsna & his promise to appear whenever the human values will be on the verge of extinction. It was all spiritual, amazing! Yet it satisfies hunger of a SciFi movie because of those awesome robots/spacecrafts and wonderful forests of Pandora. I read on some website that people felt like committing suicide after the movie got over, coz they realized that Pandora is in fact, unreal !

Avatar was a simple and neat storytelling that made it highly enjoyable to everyone young and old. Hats off to Cameron & his team for all that effort they took all those 12 years in making of this film.

If you are interested in reading more about Avatar from the people behind the screen: http://bit.ly/6aUMGN

DO, not DON’T !

The other day i was at a cafe, having an iced tea as usual, with my friends, when i noticed a young man entered the cafe with a laptop in his hand, and following him entered a tiny little girl. She must be 4 or 5. It looked like that guy was her father. He took a comfortable corner table and made his daughter sit on the chair next to him and quickly ordered a strawberry milk-shake for that little girl while logging onto his laptop.

The girl didn’t seem to be enjoying that milk-shake and her father’s company who was busy working. Shortly, she started playing with menu cards, spoons, table cloth, almost everything that was lying in front of her, except her father !

She was banging spoons on the table,(even i used to love that when i was a kid ) Annoyed and embarrassed by her acts, her father quickly snatched things from her hand and asked her not to do so and keep quiet. He was kinda rude.

Bored and annoyed, she went to the counter and started asking questions to the lady at the counter. Her father saw that and quickly pulled her hand and strictly told not to disturb others and keep quiet. he pushed himself back into that laptop.

That curious little mind again got up and started collecting menu cards from all the tables. she brought all the different colored cars back to her table and showed her father with so much enthusiasm!

“What the hell is wrong with you! I told you not to disturb me and others, sit here quietly. why don’t you listen to me?” he reacted to her  mercilessly.

All this while i was watching that innocent child and her father. That was an interesting situation. Quickly a storm of thoughts came in mind, what is the solution to this? can that girl and her father both be happy? what can i do here? what would i do if i was her father?

Eureka !

I walked up to their table and asked that girl whether she likes drawing. as most of the children do, even she said yes to drawing! I ran back to my table, pulled a pencil from my bag, grabbed a few tissue papers from the table. I went to her and showed her how easily one can draw a man with help of alphabets.

Bingo ! That worked ! she quickly took the pencil and started scribbling on the paper.. now she was busy, and for a change, she was quiet !

Surprised by this, her father looked at me with a smile and asked, “What did you do?”

The answer was simple, I said “I told her what to do, and NOT what NOT to do!”

He shook my hand and said thanks while leaving that cafe. That little girl had made more than 4 drawings by then.. she was happy, so was her father and me too!

Anger !!

Anger.
Since a while I’m trying to solve this puzzle, called Anger. It shows up in many forms, sometimes as Irritation, sometimes as hate, sometimes disappointment. I think it is something that is most common in human nature nowadays.
Anger is a very temporary emotion but leaves long lasting marks in one’s life.And everybody knows this, but still they get angry!
So i thought let’s find out more about this, of course there are people who have done enough research and written books and given lectures thousand times before on the same topic. But i thought, let’s just write down what i think about it.
I think the primary reason for developing anger is:
Kiddishness- To put it in more technical language, “immature” behavior is primary reason. a mature person thinks before reacting as we say. We all have a kid hiding in us. And as in childhood we used to get upset when we didn’t get that chocolate or that toy, and show our upset mood in form of anger by throwing things or not talking to anyone, without thinking how important that chocolate or toy is, similarly we do it even today, after getting so called maturity. The difference is, this time we are upset not for that petty chocolate, but for something of even less importance, EGO !
Mostly this ego gets hurt when we realize that we have not achieved what we had expected. When something associated with oneself does not get fulfilled, then this ego gets hurt and the easiest way to make yourself feel comfortable is trying to establish it by using the most aggressive weapon called “anger”. Because it is effective in most of the situations to temporarily dominate the other person or thoughts.

Whenever I asked questions to my elders about my religion and religious practices, that why are we doing this, why are we doing that.. then I always got an angry reaction from them asking to follow what they are telling and not to question it. I assume, they had no answers to my questions. This means:
Fear of losing possession, lack of knowledge, fear of losing superiority, lack of thoughts are other factors that make anger arise in one.

Often people take themselves for granted,
“i get angry, when someone does —-.. i can’t help.. i’m very dangerous when i’m angry !! “
“i am a bad person, i am a short tempered person, so if i get angry it’s OK, you shouldn’t do the same as me as it is not good.” A common suggestion from short tempered people !
Its like those smokers who tell smoking is bad, but smoke 10 cigarettes a day.. PEOPLE ARE PROUD THAT THEY CAN GET ANGRY AND SCARE SOMEONE!!
Actually its an easy way to avoid things by getting angry. But considering the problems that Anger causes afterwards, its the worst Disease on earth.
Yes, its a disease, it spreads by seeing. How I started getting angry? I saw my father doing so when I was disobeying him. I saw my teacher getting angry and beating kids, because they were not listening to those teachers. I am seeing it everywhere, then it is natural to do the same! Do you think so?
How successful are those people who used their anger to prove their points? Did they actually manage to live a happy life? Have you ever searched for the answers?
Anger leads to war, leads to fights, leads to heart attacks, murders, sexual abuse, divorce, unhappiness..
still we are not ready to give it up ! Why ? because we think its difficult.. I’m not an exception as well.. I show anger in some form or the other at times.. then i think why i did that? i feel rather surprised than bad.
but is it really difficult to control anger..?

My interest in this topic is compelling me to find out more… I’ll be back with some more stuff…