The Take Away shop...

There is something which I believe in and as the days have passed I believe in it even more... "Every person who comes and goes in your life, is sent to teach you something. And the length of their association is inversely related to the importance of the lesson they teach you."

This one is for some of those small associations and what they taught me.

1. Doden Uncle's daughter. My classmate in Nursery, who was also my neighbour. She was my neighbour for about 6 months odd. We used to go to school together and come back together. On our way back, Ms. Deepa, the primadona, would sleep off in the school bus. This gal would wake me up, take my bag and water-bottle along with hers, and walk along. Ms. Deepa on the other hand, would carefully hold her skirt and jump over the water puddles and mud, to avoid soiling her clothes or shoes. Both the mothers used to be waiting together and my mother used to be absolutely embarrased everyday watching the scene. She scolded me hundred times not to make her carry my things, but of no use! One day, she forgot to wake me up and she realized it when the bus was gone. She waited till the bus came back with me. She apologized to me for having left me in the bus that day.

Some years later, I used to laugh about the incident and think of that gal half-jeeringly. When one day, my mom corrected me. She said, "What makes you think that you bullied that gal all the time? I think, she was a very smart gal. She was so much in control of herself when she was just in Nursery. She was watchful that she wouldn't miss her stop. She woke you up, lest the bus took you away in your sleep. When you were still coming in terms with the daze, she would be ready with her stuff and yours, to get down. She walked you back home watching your pricey ways. Any other gal would have never seen your face from the very next day you made her do all this. And this gal did it everyday, and the day she missed she felt sorry for letting her friend down. You trusted her blindly, but could she ever place the same trust in you as a friend? In friendship, she did her bit, without even thinking what was she getting in return!

Now I do try to be a friend like her to all my friends but trust me, its not easy! There are so many times I have erred.

2. Kause Sadiki Ulaya. A pen friend from Tanzania in my 5th grade. Being an Armyman's daughter, I couldn't keep up with the mails as we changed too many addresses. I recieved her letters written in broken English, but very warm words describing her country. I could visualize Mt. Kilimanjaro when she wrote about it in her letter. (And yes, there was no Internet when I was in 5th grade.)

The lesson!! You really don't need perfect words or language to describe something, you really don't need to see the person face to face. All you need is a heart of gold, an open mind, and a hunger to know, to understand. Distances are man made.

3. The three kids of a construction labourer I taught in my 8th grade, as an experiment by my school to introduce Social awareness programmes among students. The eldest was a girl, who was in charge of looking after her 2 siblings. The second was a girl, six years old, the sharpest. The youngest was a crawling baby. I just couldn't get them interested in the class. They didn't know who Amitabh Bachhan or SRK were, they hadn't heard of bollywood songs. So I drew fruits and animals in their notebooks and their spellings next to them in Hindi. Next day the delighted little girl took me to her shanty and wanted me to paint those things on her steel box!

When words on a book or a page start making sense to someone who has never known them, the joy in those eyes is probably comparable to Alladin's excitement having found the genie inside his rotten lamp!

5. This guy when I was in 10th grade! Incidently, me and a very dear friend of mine had a crush on the same guy! And we still gossip about it.

Even after you grow up and you realize that the fella who's very sight made you feel weak in the knees once, is so dumb and such a block head, First Flame is always the First!! :D:D:D:D Isn't it, Ms. 'S'?

6. Ms. Mini Chaubey. Yes I put it on records. I and some friends made her life miserable in school. She was a crazy girl, but that didn't give us the right to pour an entire bottle of glue on her chair, paste notes on her back, or tease her with some random guy in the class and etc and etc.

Sense of humour is small expression but means a zillion things. Your humour, at the expense of somebody's happiness isn't humour, its tom-foolery! Those 2 yrs, 11th and 12th grade, are the most cherished times in my life and I have ruined those memories forever for someone! Yes, I did apologize to her personally once when I met her after school, but can I ever get back those years for her?!

7. Mr. Rohan Tatnis. God knows where he is now. I have met him just once at a family friends place. At the time when I was so frustrated with my routine and studies when I was studying for a CA degree. It was the first time I flunked by 2 marks in the Income Tax paper and I was cribbing about it. And after hearing me out, he said, "there must be students who flunked by 1 mark, and there must be students who have passed all subjects but flunked in aggregate. The fact is all of you are not good enough! Would you like to get treated by a doctor who passed on the border line? He knows 40% of the things, but there is an entire 60% percent of stuff that he doesnt know!!"

Lesson!! Stop cribbing about the system, the rules are there 'coz of some logic! Doctors & Engineers aren't accountants, so they missed such a big flaw in their passing policy! My Institute isn't :P ! Long Live the Indian CA Institute! :D:D

Or probably Rohan meant, stop fooling yourself, overcome your shortcomings and move ahead!

8. The Pakistani Uncle & Aunty we met on our trip to Niagara. We were buying the tickets for our ride and the guy at the counter was having a difficult time explaining the deal to Uncle. So Sushil pitched in and Uncle decided to tag along with us for the ride. What a delightful couple and aunty had the typical Pakistani sense of humour. We had a great time. When we came back, all of us decided to sit down for some coffee and snacks! The conversation began, and over the next two hours, Uncle gave us the most inspiring advice on so many issues that were boggling us. It was as if God had sent these two that day, just to answer our doubts and give us a push!

God sends the least expected people as messengers. Those two took some big risks in their lives and made it big! It was aunty who stood by him and kept encouraging him when the times were rough and people around them didn't know what was going on. He said, if you have decided in your head what to do, just do it! Start walking and you will know the path! The important thing is the first step!

I had read about all these things above some or the other time in my life, but I realized if one was to get wiser by someone else's experiences and learn from what people tried to teach you from books, world wouldn't have been full of clumsy people like me!

Still learning and experiencing!

yours truly!