I RAN INTO A STRANGER

I ran into a stranger as he passed by
"Oh, excuse me please" was my reply.
He said,"Please excuse me too; wasn't even watching for you."
We were very polite, this stranger and I.
We went on our way and we said good-bye.

But at home a different story is told,
How we treat our loved ones, young and old.
Later that day, cooking the evening meal,
My daughter stood beside me very still.
When I turned, I nearly knocked her down.
"Move out of the way, "I said with a frown".
She walked away, her little heart broken.
I didn't realize how harshly I'd spoken.

While I lay awake in bed,
God's still small voice came to me and said,
"While dealing with a stranger, common courtesy you use,
But the children you love, you seem to abuse.

Look on the kitchen floor,
you'll find some flowers there by the door.
Those are the flowers she brought for you.
She picked them herself, pink, yellow and blue.
She stood quietly not to spoil the surprise.
And you never saw the tears in her eyes."

By this time, I felt very small
And now my tears began to fall.
I quietly went and knelt by her bed;
"Wake up, little girl, wake up." I said.
"Are these the flowers you picked for me?"

She smiled," I found 'em, out by the tree.
I picked 'em because they are pretty like you.
I knew you would like'em, especially the blue."
I said,"Daughter, I'm, sorry for the way I acted today;
I shouldn't have yelled at you that way."
She said,"Oh, Mom, that's okay, I love you anyway."
I said,"Daughter, I love you too,
and I do like the flowers, especially the blue."

---------------- Anon.

To be Somebody, Remain a Nobody

Following is an extract from an article written by Mr. K. S. Ram.

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Prominent among the urges that inspire and drive a person in life, is the urge to be somebody. It is quite human, especially in the early stages of life to want to do something to win laurels and admiration of all around. There’s a pitfall though – the very process of becoming a somebody may subtly reduce you to a nobody.

American poet Emily Dickinson, who lived in obscurity, has an interesting poem on this theme. “I’m nobody!” she declares, with apparent pride.

“Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?”

Why should anybody be happy about being a nobody? The poem explains:

“How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!”

The word ‘bog’ is significant. When you become a somebody, you invite adulation: this then begins to bog you down. The moment you think you have arrived, you begin to stagnate, or worse, your downside begins. An endless list of writers, artists, sportsmen, politicians…fit this pattern of personal history.

To sustain your development in absolute terms, to become a true somebody, it is important to remain a temporal nobody. Even if destiny makes you a temporal somebody, you should be able to see yourself as merely an agent of a superior power; no more. This requires an exercise of will. You have to constantly watch out and talk to yourself morning and evening. Rahim, the Hindi poet, one of the jewels of Akbar, was a pious ^(religious) man, always keen to help the needy. He made no noise about it, but his fame kept spreading. When praised by people, Rahim would shrink back in discomfort. He wrote a couplet on this.

“Denewala aur hai, bhejat wo din-rain.

Log bharam hum par kare, neeche howat nain”

“The giver is someone else; He showers His gifts through day and night. People mistake and extol ^(admire) me. My eyes, abashed, are lowered!”

In more recent times Gandhiji, perhaps, is one who assiduously ^(diligently) brushed aside adulation to remain a free ‘nobody’. At the Congress session when he, the star of the session, stunned everybody by cleaning up the latrines, his act was calculated to purge Congress workers of their false sense of status, and so to return the movement of its down-to-earth roots. The point of guarding against becoming a self-defeating somebody applies to the upbringing of children as well. Doting ^(Devoted) parents often stunt the natural growth of their children through excessive adulation. Commonplace acts and utterances of the child are praised and quoted beyond reason. Talent that otherwise might have flowered under proper training, is lauded to the extent of killing it.

John Stuart Mill’s education and training began very early. At an age when many kids can barely lisp a few word, he had learnt enough Greek and Latin to read the classics in the original. Before he was five he had read more than what many scholars normally read in their career. Did this make the child John feel heady? No! Because, he tells us, his father (who was also his tutor) always made him believe that there was nothing extra ordinary about his achievement: that he was doing only what anybody is capable of doing. Mill was made to believe that other boys of his age had, in fact, grossly underestimated their capabilities and were wasting their years striving for too little.

The sequence of somebody – nobody holds true, in a way, in respect of institutions and nations as well. C Northcote Parkinson, enunciating one of his famous laws, has tried to read the pattern in the case of great empires worldwide. He connects the raising of imposing palaces to the beginning of the empire’s decline.