Good people make Good Places

“All the statistics in the world can't measure the warmth of a smile” ― Chris Hart

She saw the pictures of the assassinator in the newspaper. The news said that a teacher was burnt alive to terrorise the students and then the students were shot dead. The terrorists looked like any other young person she had seen. They looked straight into peoples’ eyes as there was no fear, just unpleasantness. Perhaps their eyes gave away the nastiness they bore. As she peered closer she saw him standing third, in the center stood he, he was none other than her adorable son.  How handsome yet so ugly. A sob escaped through her mouth. Where did she go wrong? How painful it was to watch her little one thus. Little was he? He was a full grown adult but for her he was her ‘cheeko’. As she mused she recollected the day he was born. It was a bright morning when this lovely child made way into the world. He was fair and divine looking.  People congratulated her saying that he would remain her support in her receding years. She held on to the little finger as she believed he would hold her when she grew old and dependent, but today as she crouched on the street there was no one to support her or carry her home. As she sobbed she recollected her little one going to the school on the very same path where sat now. It was a muddy one  then, but her young one was agile. There was a group of girls and boys walking ahead. A  little girl tumbled down striking her leg to the hard earth. He laughed aloud. The girl hurt tried to stand but found that the whole group was in peals of laughter. It was fun to watch her son Hari roll in joy as he described the incident. She smiled at the toothless smile who took the cue as a lesson in life. He grew, but enjoyed to see others in pain. It gave him great delight, each time. Sometimes Hari’s friends told him to help them but Hari would be engrossed in his own world of self-centeredness.

When he grew a little older, he saw the wickedness in his teacher’s eyes as she humiliated the student with her traumatic words with a gleam in her eyes as she felt it was the path of realisation. Perhaps those words were for a reform, but they were achived through humiliation.The students bowed their heads in fear while the disgraced one had tears in his eyes. It was another cue which reinstated a lesson in Hari’s life. He then saw a mishap in his neighbour's house. There were a few volunteers helping while the crowd looked on.There was pain agony and tears again but the crowd which stood around enjoyed the misery. His lessons were reinstated again. Now he strongly believed that tears and pain were a sure way of teaching lessons in life. He had now grown into an adolescent. Hari saw the butcher slaughtering the goat. The goat bleated, but the butcher’s eyes gleamed in joy. He saw chicks weighed and slaughtered. He saw small and tiny animals killed near and around him with an excuse that it was food and money for someone.

He saw cockroaches, lizards and others trampled and trodden under man’s foot. H e never missed noting the gleam of joy or the tears. The first time then he traumatised his mother for a frivolous talk, he saw tears in his mother’s eyes, tears rolled as she uttered ‘how could you do this to me…. Your mother,’ he enjoyed it with the same gleam of joy for there were tears and pain reminding him that it was right. He started tormenting women and children, old and young, animals and trees alike for now it gave him a deep pleasure. He would never leave a person till tears of pain and hurt rolled from their eyes for he understood it to be the best forms of learning. Learn he did, each day each hour the various ways to torture verbally and physically. He walked out of the house in a couple of years leaving his sick mother to fend herself.

Today as she lay on the road, she wished she were dead as now there was greater pain than ever before. How she wished she  could go back into the past and teach him the lesson of compassion. She wished she had taught him to feel the pain of  fellowmen rather than experience joy in their pain. She wished she had taught him to join the grieving in relieving them of their pain rather than standing away watch them writhe in anguish She wished she had taught him 'Ahimsa'(non-violence) while killing plants and animals and fellow men. She understood the first lesson in the life of a child should lessons of love delivered by all his stakeholders, his parents, teachers and friends. Achievements are not great if they are achieved through  twinge and soreness. If we wish to live in a  secure world learn to conquer the world through love. A message of peace should not be restricted to vocalizations, let us walk the talk to confer our children the lessons of warmth and tenderness rather than agony, dread and terror.

“How we need that security. How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this. I need someone to pour myself into.” ― Sylvia Plath