Kindness is Contagious – so spread it - Article from May 2014

Dear All

The title is inspired by same proverb displayed on sticker that is stuck on 1 of the doors of a neighbour’s house where I stay.    

Occasion for this article is a real life incident which happened sometime in the last week of May 2014 at around 9 pm at night while I was driving back home from my office at Bandra.

After driving for 5 minutes on the road at Kalanagar-Bandra, enroute to the Western Express highway I saw a man sleeping on the road and blocking the car path (half of the road). I had an option of turning my car on the right and drive away back on route to home. But at that instant thru some instinct I stopped the car. Then I walked near the man to check if he was injured and saw no signs of any injury or blood but could see that he was breathing by the movement of his chest but was fast asleep otherwise (I sensed that apparently he was heavily drunk and had fully passed out).  

I travel by the road frequently and the cars drive fast in there. So there was a possibility that some car/cars would not be so careful and drive over the man’s body – injuring him severely or even killing him. I immediately decided that I needed to take all possible steps to save this man from getting injured. The reasons for his drunkenness may or may not be his fault – but he will be someone’s son, someone’s husband, someone’s father or any combination out of the three. I knew that 5 minutes enroute there is also a police check-post and police vans are stationed there.
I drove near the police check-post - on the way waved and stopped 2 cars coming from the opposite direction and narrated them to drive carefully so as not to drive over the man.
I narrated the incident of the sleeping man in detail to 2 police staff who were sitting at the post and to 1 police officer who was sitting in the police van and requested them to take due care and sensitized them that otherwise there was a high risk of the man getting seriously injured by moving vehicles.

I stopped to see & from a distance saw them reach over near the man and then I started the car and drove back home. I had possibly saved 1 life or at-least a major injury  

After returning home, post my dinner I got a rush of thoughts in my mind:

Why did I stop my car?
Because this may not be first instance of me observing a man lying sleeping on the road and I don’t recollect stopping my car even once in the past 10 years since I am driving except may be on 2/3 occasions where I had stopped for a moment and then driven away the next instant.

Was there any purpose for my actions being different this time?

Am I seeing some shift in my thinking – closer to becoming kinder, serving society?
I decided to think deeper but I still could not get the correct answers.

One thought that struck to me was, may-be it was possible that some people had taken care of me in the earlier years of my life when I had suffered injuries or encountered difficult situations and may be God wanted me to repay back to the society- by helping others.

Then I recollected 2 incidents from my childhood days:

1) When I was in 4th standard in school we were playing langdi on school ground after the school got over at around 12.30. The ground was of concrete and I had just learnt the langdi pose or stance. It was my den and I slipped while trying to catch my friend with the langdi pose and fell on the concrete floor on my head. The next instant I recollect I was in doctor’s cabin (since I had passed out) with my grandfather by my side and the doctor putting a bandage around my head and telling grandfather not to send me to school for 10 days.

l came to know on the next day from grandfather that my entire fore-head had been stitched and told me that 1 of my friend (I recollect Sanjay-he used to stay somewhere @ Chakala) along-with his mother had checked around – traced the maid servant who used to come for picking me – put me in an auto and dropped me home @ Vile-parle in the fastest possible time, since I was bleeding profusely.  He also told me that the Doctor had said that delay would have resulted in blood loss since it not stopping and me being admitted to hospital.

I need to check on Sanjay and meet his mother – the last time I recollect meeting him was at-least 13-14 years back.  

2) Next incident was when we were playing cricket on our ground when I was in 8th/9th standard. I ran for catching the ball for getting a batsman out and one of my friend also ran for the catch. My friend collided with me head on and his head hit my nose and my nose started bleeding profusely. One of our other friends from the group (I recollect his name was Diru) was staying across the road and he with all our cricket team (we were 5/6 boys) took me home. Diru’s house was locked so we rang his neighbour’s bell and the lady in the house, applied Ice on my nose for the next half an hour with her 2 daughters taking turns. The lady said that my nose had shaped into a tomato shape – with red colour – to which except me all others had a good laugh on her joke.    

The very next day of the incident, I visited the same police post near Kalanagar-Bandra and checked about the drunken man – whose whereabouts I had notified to the police and got a positive feedback from the police post to the effect that the man was recovering from his drunken-ness.  

Some Learnings that I could derive from these childhood incidents:

1. There may be other such incidents also – and I mentally thanked them in my mind and then realized that maybe now the time has come for me to return the good deeds back to the society. I also made up my mind to stretch my memory and recollect all the good people who have helped me in the past and try to trace and visit them.

2. May be there is something bigger that God has in mind for me to contribute to the society at large. I am still to think of a way – though I know that there are a lot of options available at hand, to make this genuinely possible.

Also if by this small write-up, I can ignite a spark in some people’s minds – I think this would be a good beginning. 

 

Have a great day

Ravindra

 

Make my day and make lives of people better

Dear Friends

 

My Inspiration for this article is based on a true incident that happened with me, some time in month of February 2017.

Sometime during this year we had an office lunch party, but forgot to narrate to my wife and she packed my regular lunch-box. I realized in the evening, that the lunch box was there with me and more-over I would be late in returning home since I had to attend our office dinner party.

Also by that time almost all the office staff had left, so there was no person to whom I could have given away my tiffin box.

I left my office and started walking across the road to where my car was parked and thinking to myself what to do with the tiffin box – not wanting to waste the delicious food in anyway – that was home-cooked by my wife.

Just then I came across 2/3 hutments across the road near to the place where my car was parked and a lady cooking on a stove outside 1 of the hutments. I immediately walked across and spoke to the lady and offered her the tiffin box. She took it gladly and emptied the contents of my tiffin box in her spare utensils. On seeing the vegetable (it was potato-brinjal mix curry), she let out a squeal – and said thanks my boy - it’s my son’s favourite vegetable. The shine in her eyes said a thousand words and made my day.

I also recollected another incident from my school years, when during rainy season I took 1 student of our school (unknown to me) who was not carrying any rain-coat / umbrella along-with me in my umbrella…to the school from the bus-stop. And that boy gave me the greatest of thank-you wishes that I still re-collect and treasure, much more than any other gifts that I have received till now.  

I thought to myself that in the same way as I had helped and supported the people in their lives in my own small way, another set of people would also have given me the help, support in their own special way. And thereby it must be God’s own way of returning back the good deeds to people, (through me as a medium) of the good deeds that were rendered to me by other people.  

That day I thought to myself – there are so many ways of supporting the people while living our daily lives and this need not necessarily be only through financial means.

I mean simple things like - giving away your son’s last year text-books to the needy children instead of selling them to the newspaper vendor, teaching simple basic mathematics to your maid’s son who can’t afford to go to school – which will surely help him in his routine life when he grows up, reading out newspapers to the people at old-age homes and so on.  

Thus if we can through different ways – Make someone’s day brighter and cheerful and in the process improve the lives of at-least some people in this world....and that too without expecting anything in return, then I am sure the satisfaction that we would get out of these deeds would be worth its weight in gold.

 

Get Inspired and enjoy

Ravindra