Me and my daughter were at a fruit shop at ECR, near the University Gate. It was around 9:30 pm. There was a hotel nearby. It was not an expensive one. A normal non-vegetarian hotel that you can see anywhere in Pondicherry and Tamilnadu.
I saw a man aged about fifty walking by the road. He was wearing a torn shirt and pants which might have never seen water for a long time. He was untidy and un-bathed. He was looking very dull which was evident from the way he was walking.
As he passed by the Hotel, there was a voice from the hotel,
"Will you eat Briyani?".
This was a voluntary question from the hotel guy.
This person said "Yes".
Shortly they gave him Briyani. It was properly served on a neat and clean plate. This man looked at the quantity of food and he said, "I don't need this much".
The hotel guy encouraged him to eat but the man denied it.
This man insisted to take away a portion of Briyani and give it to another hungry person.
When this man started eating, a dog came near him. Without any hesitation, he gave the first chunk of food to that dog, and then only he started eating.
The four note-worthy things here are, the voluntary call from that hotel guy, the proper serving of food in a decent plate, this man giving back the extra food, and giving the food to the dog before he started eating. It was not the hotel's closing time. So most probably it's not the remaining food. There were still people eating at that hotel.
The basic human qualities of Compassion and Empathy are still alive and active at the gross-root level. A large chunk of people at the so-called bottom layer of society is still sensible to the needy. Hope the same qualities would bubble up to those people who call themselves educated, well qualified, and rich.
What's the use of Education and everything else a person possesses, if the hunger and pain of a fellow being don't disturb him/ her?
I told my daughter, these are the things equally important to the ones that she is learning at her school. Equally is an understatement. Teaching kids basic human values are far more important than making them mere Information consuming machines. With the speed at the which the technology is growing, the information that we provide to them at schools and colleges might become outdated but I believe core human value-system is far from the reach of technology.
Long live that hotel guy and this anonymous man whom the world might label as a beggar. He is not rich but surely he was one of the wealthiest men I have met in a long time.
The time spent there was "fruitful" for me and my daughter.
#empathy #compassion
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