The Tryst of Truth and Lie

“When you have only two rupees left in the pocket, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily for your loved one with the other.” A beautiful Chinese proverb.One fine morning during coffee, We were chalking out plans for our first anniversary celebration. That is when we came across this quote. It made us ponder, Celebrations and occasions apart how much of quality time have we spent with each other in the last one year, and you wont believe there weren’t enough instances to count. Our lives have been so busy and occupied. His workstation was based in Bangalore. Though he worked from home, he had to frequently shuttle between Bangalore and Chennai. And I was busy preparing for the MBA entrances. The idea of our weekend was not watching a movie but going to TIME and Career launcher to take Mock CATs. We have been running around so much that we dint realize that its going to be an year after marriage.

Friends, this is not only me but this is the case with most of my friends and people around these days. There are so many other priorities in life that people miss to take out time to love. How much have we changed over the generation ! There was a time when it used to be a joint family system with more than 20 members staying in the same house. It reduced to a joint family with lesser number of siblings. Then we changed to nuclear families and today the husband is in one city, the wife is in another city and the kid in the boarding school. We are simply drifting apart. This generation does have a better vision about life, we know what we want to be doing, but are we achieving the core essentials of our life? Are we loving each other and spreading happiness around or we are too busy in our own shells ? This is a question I have always found difficult to answer. When I was looking for a profile change I came across Venkat and I was asking him for options available. Before addressing my question the first thing he said was, You guys got recently married and these are the golden years of married life, Why don’t you take light and do this racing a little later? It sounded old fashioned to me at that time but thinking to the depth it does makes sense. Technology changes, new gadgets flood into the market, life becomes more and more sophisticated but even decades after decades the joy of love doesn’t change. The need for the happiness is still the same as with our old generation. But unfortunately we just don’t have time.

I want to share the story of one of my aunt. It is not a coffee break story but something that really touches me and puts me to think what am I here for? My aunt is aged 38 and she chose to be a spinster and dedicate her life for a cause than leading just another biological cycle of life. She runs an adoption centre and is the mother of some 50 odd gods children. I had a close experience during my school vacation. There was one 8 year old girl Selvi. She lost her mother at the age of 2 and her drunkard father couldn’t afford to raise her. There were many other kids in the adoption center who had their own stories. but this Selvi being of my age I used to play with her often. Whenever she felt sad of not having a family my Aunt would cheer her up saying once someone adopts her she will have a new mother.. a new life and the affection she was craving for. Finally there was a Spanish couple who wanted to take her along with. My Aunt prepared all the adoption papers and the day of departure, the Spanish mother bent down and kissed her new daughter, Selvi who was wearing my old frock turned and looked at my Aunt. There was a feeling of gratitude in her eyes. She meant to say thanks, a thanks for giving me the source of purest love in this world – the love of parents. Through her eyes I can see this happiness flowing through the depth’s of her soul.

Friends, happiness could be different things to different people. We may toil, work hard & smart and become Fortune 500 firm’s CFOs, CEOs, travel in BMWs and see one’s bank account growing but is his/her “love account” growing? Growing love account requires one to take out time, be together with family and be ready to take part in their sadness and happiness. The first circle of happiness is what man draws around himself, the next circle is around his family and then a few like my Aunt extend the circle to change the destiny of faceless people. We would never meet the purpose of evolution without spreading love and happiness. Let’s brew happiness and the joy of love around. I would end this with the same quote “When you have only two rupees left in the pocket, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily for your loved one with the other.”