26th April 2011
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
I was thinking about the idea of helping and receiving help. I have seen some of my friends who have a natural instinct to help others without expecting anything in return. They extend their help because they sincerely and honestly want to help. They will feel restless if they do not help or when they are prevented from helping. This natural instinct to help is like the natural instinct of a singer to hum a tune. Similarly those who have a natural instinct to help don't wait for an occasion to offer their help. It's like the water which flows naturally from a higher surface to a lower surface!
I cannot help recalling my friend Ramdas who lives in Singapore. I don't know if he remembers an incident. Sometime in 1986 me and my wife visited Singapore for the first time. In fact it was our first ever visit abroad. We noticed that in Singapore buses, you should have exact change in the form of coins to pay for the ticket by dropping the exact amount in a machine and the machine will issue a ticket. For the first few days we were not prepared for this and we had some problem. On the fourth day when we met Ramdas, he asked us if we know about the facility they have in every bus terminal to draw loose change for currency note through a machine. We said we did not know about it. Immediately he put his hands into his pant pocket and pulled out a handful of coins and even without counting the same, thrust the same into my hands and said that I can have the coins until the next time I went to a bus terminal!
Not only that. For the entire month we stayed there, he was there for any help from shopping to sightseeing. On the last day, he came to the airport, checked in our luggage, got us the boarding pass and wished us a safe journey home.
I held his hands and said, `Ramdas, I don't know how I'm going to reciprocate all the help we received. If you were in India, I will be able to do it. But you are in Singapore and I don't know when I will visit Singapore or when you will visit India to give me an opportunity to return your help'. The reply he gave made me to take him as my role model for helping. He said, `Sridharan, forget about returning my help to me. In your life, if there is an opportunity to help anyone, please offer your copious help to them and that help will come to me!'.
Over this weekend, evaluate your helping quotient and rate how comfortable you are on this self evaluation.
N C Sridharan
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