TINY DROPS OF WISDOM

             These are some of the stories which I had come across in my childhood, either told by my parents or through comics. Though I did not realize then, they have a lot of life lessons to teach. Here are three of them. I will keep adding.

1. Ignorance - in a good way

    There was once a small kid who was moved to a different region due to his father’s job. It was the first day at his new school. He came home crying that the students were making fun of him being too thin. His parents tried to convince him telling that such things do happen in the first few days at a new school and it will be fine once he makes new friends. However, this continued for many days and everyday he would come home crying about the same thing.

One day, he told his grandmother when she visited him.

He said “Grandma, I have never hurt anybody, I have never done anything bad to anyone, but why do they keep teasing me every day?” Understanding the situation of her grandchild, she gave a small task for him to do the next day.

She said “Tomorrow, carry a bottle without cap having water filled up to the rim. You should not let even a drop of water be spilled out till the end of the day and you should bring it home with the same amount of water. If you do this, the kids will not tease you.”

The kid sincerely obeyed and came home merrily the next day that none of the kids teased him. Grandma replied “This is how it works my child. People keep commenting you no matter how perfect and good you are. To survive and be happy, you should change your focus towards your passion and motivate yourself to achieve it instead of caring about those comments. Kids did tease you today but you ignored them as you were focusing on the spillage of water out of the bottle”.

               So the life lesson that this teaches us, not to give ears to the society and focus on what you really like and proceed to live doing stuffs you love.

               I had read the above story during my childhood from the comic book ‘Tinkle’.      

2. Life has to move on!

I love animals. I get dejected when I see them die. When I was a child, a dog died in front of me. This made me very sad and I started sobbing. It was very difficult for my mom to console me. I kept asking her “Why did God kill that poor dog?” That's when she came up with this story which instantly cheered me up.

               We all know our mischievous Naradha. One day, he went to Lord Vishnu and asked him, "Why do people chant 'Om Namo Narayana'. What difference does it make?” Lord Vishnu laughed and took Naradha to Booloka (earth). He showed him a silk moth which was transforming into a butterfly. He asked Naradha to chant the mantra thrice to it. As soon as Naradha chanted the mantra, it died. Following this, Lord Vishnu took the disturbed Naradha to a place where a tadpole was transforming into a frog. He asked Naradha to do the same. Naradha, hoping that the result would be different this time, did as told. The frog died. This continued for a number of times and the Lord was not ready to explain too. Finally, it was the turn of a human baby. Naradha couldn't hold it longer and asked the Lord 'O Lord, the greatest of the creators, how could you destroy these many lives? I can do this no more' to which the Lord did not comment and asked him to do it again. Terrified Naradha, following the Lord's word, chanted the mantra again. To his surprise, the baby did not die. Instead, the baby spoke "O Mighty lord and his great devotee, thank you". The confused Naradha asked “Why are you thanking us dear baby?” for which the baby said "Dear Naradha, I am the butterfly who died. Due to my sins in my previous birth, I was born as a silk moth to suffer. When you chanted the mantra, my sins were forgiven and I was born as a frog in my next life. This continued and now all my sins are forgiven and I am born as a human baby to a wonderful family. You have freed my soul from all the sins, Thank you!" Naradha became ecstatic and thanked the Lord for showing the power of his mantra.

That's when Naradha began to chant the mantra whenever and where ever he could.

This made me happy and I ran to the dog, chanted the mantra praying that his soul would be free of sins and he would be born somewhere else free of sins. Though this story does not make a lot of sense now, this taught me to move on when the unexpected happens, hoping that whatever happened, happened for good.

3. Innocence at its best

There once lived a farmer who had a dog. The dog had given birth to two puppies. He planned to sell them after a few months. The ‘Mom’ dog knew this, as this was what had happened the previous time she had given birth. So, she advised her puppies to be loyal and faithful where ever they go. The puppies, however, were very sad about leaving their mom. So, they came up with a plan. They planned to somehow attract their owner and earn a good name from him so that they won’t be sent anywhere. To do this, they thought of keeping watch of the house at night, once their tired mom goes to sleep. This way, they could earn a good name from their owner as well as train themselves to realize their dreams of becoming the best ‘Watch dogs’.

               On the first day, when they were on watch, they saw a black woolly creature which seemed to move at times. They were pretty sure that this harmful creature was not welcomed by anyone to their home and so moved towards it, slowly. They stayed foot whenever the creature moved and once it came to rest, these puppies moved. Slithering like a snake, they reached the spot. However, the creature didn’t seem to respond. ‘You can’t fool us’ cried the puppies as they sprung on it fiercely and started pulling it towards them so that they can show it to their mother and owner. But, they didn’t realize that it was their owner’s blanket that they were pulling which eventually made him wake up. The angry farmer beat the puppies and they ran to their mother crying. Mom dog calmed them down and told them that such plans wouldn’t work.

               On the second day, the puppies convinced themselves that there was nothing wrong with the plan, but they were guarding at the wrong place. So this time, they moved to a different place. However, they did not know that the farmer too, had moved to a different place to sleep to avoid the nuisance of these puppies. They found the same black creature and did the same thing they did the previous day and woke the farmer up. But, this time when the farmer woke up, he found a thief moving into the house slowly. He immediately caught the thief red-handed and called the police.

               The following morning, he acknowledged the puppies’ help and felt bad for having beat them up. So, he allowed them to stay with him. The proud mom dog licked the delighted puppies and they lived happily ever after.

               This story was told by my dad to me when I was very young. Though this does not teach any life lesson or so, I cherish this because for the first time, I imagined every part of the story. The puppies, the farmer, the old house etc. This created my love for stories. I started reading and began to get lost in my own creative world, becoming a ravenous reader.