How wealthy are you?

Once on a rainy day, while I was walking my way to college, I happened to come across a fruit vendor. She was walking on the street with a basket full of fruits on her head. And it was raining heavily. While she was going to take a turn to the other street, she just slipped and fell. And the fruits from her basket were scattered all over the road. No one wanted to get wet. But there was one young boy who didn’t hesitate to help her pick up her fruits and place them back in her basket while everyone just stood there and watched. I thought maybe he would slip one in his pocket.
But he didn’t. At that time my stupid mind asked me a weird question: ‘What the hell is he doing? Will he not get wet? Why is this lady so important that he goes out of his way to help her? After all, she is only a fruit vendor.

While I was sitting in the bus on my way home, seeing the water dripping inside the bus (the Kadamba buses of Goa are always an umbrella of rain during the monsoons), I remembered the incident. It was then that I got my answer. The boy was important. He went out of his way to help the lady who was in need. And happiness was all around him when he was satisfied with what he had just done. In our generation, with great difficulty we find people as important as this young boy.

Each one of us has a selfish motive – Me and My Development. My neighbor had bought a 42 inch LED TV. And I couldn’t tolerate it. I couldn’t even afford one so I went to his house for dinner and broke his TV remote. Well, that’s not how we should behave. But it’s what the highly educated people do. They try their best to take over other’s possessions.

I had heard of a family where there were 2 brothers & 5 cows. At the time of division, all the property was equally divided among them. Well, now it would be much easier if they had cows in even numbers. Each one got two cows and no one spared the cow that left unaccounted since it could not be divided. It was cooked for dinner and each got half the share. That is how we are – the 21^st century people. We fight for power, fame and wealth. Why yearn for it when we are not going to take it with us after we will leave this world? What we will take with us is the blessings and prayers of the needy who have felt some comfort because of our existence.

We will be better off if we give more than what we take. And like it is said in Ruth's blog, no matter which end of the spectrum we fall in, all are given a same space of 8 x 4 feet in the graveyard.