The
other day I stumbled upon a YouTube video in which a young man was tying the
shoelace of an old customer because he could not bend to help himself. This
happened in a mall where the young man worked and discovered that the old man
could not bend to fix his shoes. So he stopped near him, sat on his heels, tied
his shoelaces, stood up with a big smile and helped him push his cart some
distance. This video created a sensation among the viewers. They thought it an
unusual, though a welcome gesture.
This
created mixed response in me, both hope and despair. I despaired that such a
natural human gesture should evoke surprise in any person. Extending a helping
hand to someone who needs it should be a perfectly obvious and natural
reaction. To consider it as unusual suggests how far we have strayed from the
very basic qualities of being human. But all is not lost. Though people were
surprised, no one thought it unwelcome, in fact all of them liked it. This
shows that man is still capable of appreciating what is noble, and beautiful.
I
got another proof of this inherent goodness embedded in the heart of man. In
another YouTube video shot in the Stirling station, Perth, Australia a couple
of weeks ago, I noticed a very heart-warming scene. A commuter slipped and fell
while climbing into the train. One of his legs got trapped between the platform
and the train, and it could not be extracted. Then most of the commuters got
down from the train, pushed and tilted the compartment until the person
imprisoned between the train and the platform was released.
Can
you doubt the essential goodness of the human heart?
I
was witness to another incident, both ugly and beautiful. I was travelling in a
train which stopped for a brief few minutes at Secunderabad railway station.
People scrambled to get down and get up. There was a great push near the door,
and an old man fell down on the platform while alighting. He was trying to get
up on his wobbling legs not to be crushed in the crowd. But he was falling down
again and again. I was watching all this from a neighbouring window. No one
even noticed him lying there. They were either climbing over him, or avoiding
him. Suddenly my heart jumped in delight! A couple of teen age boys, one of
them a tea carrier, and the other a shoe-polisher, stopped there, picked up the
fallen man, made way in the crowd for him, took him to a nearby bench, put him
there. The old man was panting and blessing them for saving him from being
crushed to death. The tea-vender offered him a cup of tea, and left. The
shoe-polish boy was sitting with him when our train started moving.
I was very sad and happy at the same time. Why
is it that people who are educated, who enjoy the gifts of life, are so much
less human than a tea vender and a shoe-polisher in their teens? Why does our
billion-dollar education system fail to teach us natural piety, and spontaneous
humanity? Yet all is not lost if we see even in a tea vender and a
shoe-polisher the light of a new dawn.
Is
it an overstatement to say that Love all
and serve all is the new mantra of salvation? It is the most human aspect
of a human being, which is also divine. Is it an understatement to insist First be human before striving towards
Divinity? Didn’t we witness the highest human qualities of love,
compassion, and empathy and the divine qualities of omnipresence and
omnipotence inhering in Swami? They were not like the skin and the shirt, but
like a honeyed drink, both enriching each other. He wore them as a child wears
his smile, so effortlessly, so unconsciously. He always insisted that we
look within, and manifest the human excellences embedded in our hearts and
minds. Swami always pointed out that wisdom is not imported from outside; it is
an awakening from inside. It is to awaken that which is waiting within us all
the time to manifest itself. Kindness, love, unselfishness, empathy were never
dead. Fear, hate, selfishness, greed have covered them. Just as single acts of
cruelty and baseness hurts the human psyche, single acts of kindness and
empathy lifts the human psyche. Swami wanted us to multiply acts that connect
us to our neighbours and environment. Isn’t it re establishing Dharma, or right
living?
The
tea seller and the shoe polisher at the Secunderabad station, the sales boy in
the mall and the people at the Stirling station, and millions elsewhere
performing little acts of spontaneous goodness demonstrate how we can upgrade
our consciousness in our natural journey to Divinity.
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