12142008 - My teachers :) ..

Was just doing some random thinking when this poped up in my head. Its an incident that happened two years back, when i was in my final year of engineering.

I was at a bhel puri shop with my friend pavan eating some junk but very taste-buds-tingling food. We were half done when we saw a vehicle stop near the shop. A Middle aged couple with a 3-4 year old girl came walking towards us. The kid had a bouncing ball ( for those of you who do not know what a bouncing ball is.. its a form of a very dense rubber ball, which bounces high, much higher than a normal rubber ball, and its size is about 1/4th the normal tennis ball, and is mostly tansparent and has a lot of patterns of vivid colors in its core). So the kid was very happy playing with the ball, admiring the patterns inside its core, it must have been her new toy of the day. Her father was busy talking with the shop owner, giving him the list of chats they wanted, apparently taking suggestions from the kids' mother who was telling him her choice from quite a distance. And then this disaster happened..  the ball somehow slipped the kid's hand, and started rolling towards the near by road. The kid looked at her mother with a mixed expression of confusion ( she might not have understood what was going on !! this is my assumption ), sadness ( of  losing her companion ) and tension ( because she was afraid to walk alone and fetch the ball herself .. i think ! ) and then came the expression that i can never forget - the way she extended her hands, and wriggled her fingers slightly, pointing them in the direction of the rolling ball, as though asking the ball to magically return back to her, simultaneously looking at her mother with an almost-crying face asking her mother in an un-heard voice to rescue that ball.. made me keep my plate on the near by chair, run after the ball, stop it from rolling out of reach, retrieve it back and give it to the kid. My actions were out of instinct and all this happened in 30 seconds, all the while neither her mother or father were aware of this. The kid's mother took notice of me when i returned the ball to the kid. She looked at me, deduced the situation and asked the kid to thank the **uncle** :). The kid gave me the sweetest of smiles, holding her mother's pallu, and hiding half of her face in that.. by god that was the best smile a girl has given to me ever till date :) . I smiled back in return ( but mine was simply lifeless in front of hers !!! ). Well what happened after that was, we ( pavan and i ) returned back and i went to sleep.

Looking back now, this is just one among the many small but very meaningful incidents i have had in my life, which has taught me soo many things -

1. The kid never knew that the ball was probably worth 15 bucks, to her it meant a whole world of happiness. Money is not always the means that brings happiness.

2. The involvement the kid had while playing with the ball. This activity may be meaningless to the "civilzed beings" like us, but to her it meant more, and i was able to visualize the level of involvement when i saw the expression on the kid when she lost the ball. It made me think !!

3. Her method of expressing things, she knows something is going wrong, she knows that an action needs to be taken to prevent it, but she cannot do it alone. The expression on her face will always remain within me. Sometimes words are not the only means of expressing things, an action can make more sense than 1000 words.

4. Her method of being content with whatever she had. She was very happy with her new toy, even though it did not cost a penny !! but if it comes to me.. i am being modest when i say - i am not content with my life !!! I want soo many things in life, and in my current state, i can probably get most of it !!! haha.. but i am not letting that get into my head like before.. i am improving.. my teacher ( this kid ) has made her actions carve a new lesson within me.

5. The innocence - I have noticed that every thing with life, when it is little, is always cute, Eg: take a tiger cub, or a puppy dog, from the most ferocious animal on this planet to the most harmless thing, everything when it is in its infancy looks good to my eyes, and i believe that its because of the innocence.

6. Finally, The SMILE - and what a smile it was.. her way of thanking me was just too good. My actions ( of running and retrieving the ball ) did not cost me much, but the return i got back was much more than what i expected. This taught me that, when i did not expect anything for my action and there was a return, i felt happy. Perhaps this is what krishna has said in bhagavadh geetha - " KarmaNye vaadhikaarasthe maa phaleshu kadaachana, maa karmaphala heturbhoohoo, maate sangostva karmaNi" .. do your work and leave the results to me - i will take care of it. Funny how simple things can teach you such meaningful lessons.

Well i recently picked up this book ( again out of impulse ), its titled - Why is God laughing ?  by Deepak Chopra. I paid a rather unfair amount ( Rs. 440 to be exact ) for a mere 200-odd pages book and i will be honest, i regretted paying such money for such a thin book. But when i read through it, i realized that it was not a bad decision after all. If you are interested, and if you ever get a chance to read this book, please do so. Its a fictional book, that has very deep meaning. The author explains emotions of life in a very simple manner, well.. atleast it was simple to me :). In the book, a dead father converses with his son, and through a messenger, he teaches the son to overcome the disturbances of the material world in and empowers him to think beyond. The methods that the messenger uses are very simple, but the results that come out of it are very valuable. I will warn you though, i have given this book to a couple of my friends to read through it and to tell me how it was, and by far i have got very mixed reponses ! So, this may be a bit philosophical to the people who are interested in thriller or fiction or fantasy or such kind of books, but for people who wish to introspect themselves, for people who wish to go within themselves, this is an absolute beauty. I enjoyed every page of it and i hope you do too :) . I will put an icing on the top by narrating this small idea from the book, Why is God Laughing ? , he says -
There are two sorts of happiness in this world -
1. Happiness that comes with a reason.
2. Happiness that comes without a reason.
The former can be taken away from you if the reason is taken away ( Eg: i am happy today because i have a bicycle, if you take away the bicycle, you take away my happiness ), but the latter is the one that stays, because you do not need a reason to be happy, you are JUST HAPPY :) and that is exactly "Why God is laughing !" :)