29th April 2011
Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
While I was thinking about the concept of helping each other, I thought I should touch upon one more dimension about the emotional aspect while helping. Perhaps you have heard about people whose `left hand will not know when their right hand is helping'. Helping is a noble act of loving each other and perhaps the charm of receiving help or offering help is lost when there is publicity about helping.
I recall an incident when I visited Japan way back in 1986 as part of the Indian team which participated in the seminar on Motivation for Productivity organised by the Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), Tokyo. It was an international seminar which was attended by over 60 delegates from all over the Asian countries. It was a scholarship offered by Asian Productivity Organisation and all of us were given an allowance calculated on a per day basis for thirty days.
On the first day of our seminar all of were given the money in cash kept in an envelope. That day evening we all left for our hotel room by train. Unfortunately, one of the participants lost all the money in the travel. He reported this to us on the next day morning when we assembled in the training hall. He was totally upset. Knowing that he would be paid the allowance by the APO, he did not bring enough money from home. And on the top of it, all of were absolute strangers and we were meeting each other for the first time. The incident takes place on the very first day, even before any familiarity and friendship could develop among us!
All of us did not know what to do and how to respond. Immediately, my friend from Delhi, Anil Sachdev, whom also I met first time that day, took the lead. He made an announcement that we should all help the person with whatever money we could and passed on a plastic bag requesting us to drop our contribution into the bag. He said that we need not announce how much we are dropping into the bag! The gag went around and at the end, we counted the collection, and it was a substantial amount! All of us felt happy and needless to say that the person who lost the money, was emotionally touched by the spontaneous help!
That day I learnt how we should spontaneously and decently help a person in need!
N C Sridharan
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