Random Thoughts- I

On 1^st Aug the whole world seemed to have seeped in friendship day celebrations. Although I am not a big supporter of such events but I would not mind people celebrating it while remaining in the cultural boundaries…boundaries which they themselves have to set for their own selves. If things don’t become anti-legal and anti-national, it’s for the individual to set the limits for oneself and no one has the authority to police them as it happened in Raipur, where many boys and girls were severely beaten and molested by the party workers of a section of saffron leadership, in the pretext of saving the pure Indian culture. Many in the city must have seen these sincere “party workers” usually roaming around purposelessly, chewing gutka and spitting whenever it starts leaking from the corners of their mouth, but somehow their immense sense of patriotism kicks up on occasions like these. In one of the scenes a girl, whose face has been already slandered with some dark liquid by these patriots, is so brutally pushed to the ground that I fear she might have suffered some major fractures. But I am sure it’s not the physical anguish that will hurt this young lady more. That scene made me wonder how the scene in Germany must have been when the Russian army, after conquering it in the Second World War, was allowed to do as they pleased with German women for three whole days. I somehow feel we too are moving in the same direction. In proving ourselves to be a tolerant society we are ending up tolerating things which will leave us crippled for the rest of our future.

On a personal note I had a good friendship day. It could be one of the best of my life. An old friend who was my class mate when we were in 3^rd std in Vizag invited me to his wedding. He promised me that he would be inviting many of my long lost friends and he kept the promise. It was one of those rare moments when I met some of my child hood pals after more than 15 years. For me it was as if watching a movie in which I see a group of children playing happily in the fields and fishing in the ponds and climbing the mountains and cycling on the roads and suddenly the next scene is of all them completely grown up and mature and I am trying to find some familiar features and gestures in them and getting very excited when I found them. I never thought I would make it, but thank God that I did. As I could make it from our chit-chat that Mrs. Rita Brian was still our unanimous best teacher and I remember one day she said to us that there will be a day when you will look back at these years and regret growing up and I wondered with utter disbelief why would I ever do that since I always was in a hurry to grow up. But wasn’t she right!

A story had been coming back to me again and again this week. Let me share it.

There was a teacher who gave his student a Bible and asked him to read. This student always found it very difficult to read it. He came back to the teacher and complained that he couldn’t make out as to what’s written in the book. The teacher asked him to focus and read it carefully. But the impatient student still couldn’t get what was written in it, so he went back to the teacher to report the same. This time the teacher gave him a bamboo basket and asked him to fetch some water from the nearby waterfall. The student almost lost it when he heard this. He said it’s impossible to fetch water in a bamboo basket since it had millions of holes. The teacher said to him to just do what was told to him but the student thought it was simply a waste of effort and refused to do it. The teacher, very patiently told him to have faith and just do it without applying his own wisdom. So he went to the waterfall reluctantly and placed the basket under it for some time and as he expected no water could be gathered in it and so he went back to his master to tell him about the obvious. After listening to the animated student, the master smiled and asked him to look into the basket and said “Isn’t it at least cleaner than before? “

Initially we may not make much sense of what the Bible wants to say but if we persevere enough the Author of the book may give us enough understanding to perceive how He wants us to perceive it. Meanwhile we can be sure of it doing its cleansing.

Until He gives us the container to gather the water from the mighty waterfall, lets allow our baskets to be cleansed by the flow. God Bless.