Every day is a new day

 About a hundred years ago, there lived in the town of Wai, on the bank of the Krishna river (in Satara district of Maharashtra, then known as the Bombay Presidency) a jeweller named Shyam Saraf. He lived with his parents Narayan and Jayabai, his wife Surekha and their children Govind and Kavita. Narayan had inherited the jewellery shop from his father, and had run the business for over forty years. As a boy, Shyam spent much of his spare time at the family's shop. By observing his father at work, Shyam learnt the art of making ornaments, presenting finished ornaments to customers, valuing jewellery pieces that people brought for sale, and the other finer aspects of an enterprising jeweller. When Narayan felt Shyam had enough experience to run the business on his own, he retired from the business. For the last few years, Shyam had looked after the shop. He earned enough to cover the family's expenses, and also to save for a rainy day. In those days, it was a custom for every pe...

 If the rainy season starts when the saplings of planted crops are tiny, it may appear to be beneficial to the saplings.  Farmers do not agree. They want the plantlets to send roots deep down in search of moisture. If the plantlets find plenty of moisture near the surface, they tend to grow shallow roots. This means that the plants grow into fragile shrubs or trees, vulnerable to storms and rain. If saplings experience dry weather early in their life, they send roots deep into the soil. As a result, they can withstand strong winds when they are grown. Dr. Phil McGraw, host of the talk show ‘Dr. Phil’, once said, "Everybody at some point is going to have adversity. I think if we don't learn from that, then it was just a penalty. But if you use it, then it becomes tuition."  At meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, participants recite the Serenity Prayer: "God grant me the courage to change what I can, the strength to accept what I can't, and the wisdom to know the dif...

  In your prior job, if you have done everything short of keeping your bones in the desert sun to get bleached, should you not try for something better in the next job?

 एका वस्तूचा गन्ध किव्हा त्याचे स्पर्श अनुभव कर्ण्यसाठी त्या वस्तुच्या जवळ जायलाच पाहिजे! त्यामुळे गन्ध आणि स्पर्श हे दोन इन्द्रीयानी जे आप्ले अनुभव असतात, ते अत्यन्त वैयक्तिक अस्तात। याञ्चे अनुभव मनात साठवू शकतो परन्तु पुस्त्कात किव्हा चित्रपटात पकडून ठेवू शकत नाही!

 I recently read a centre-piece written by a senior citizen for our City's newspaper. He writes that when his father bought him a bicycle, he had to get a licence from the local police station, to ride the bicycle. The police station issued him a metal plate, which he had to fix below the headlight. Now that's a far cry from today's world, in which we do not aspire to buy a bicycle anymore! That is not all. When the family bought a radio (people called it a radio set, in those days), they had to get a licence for it, from the local post office! The family paid fifteen rupees a year for this licence. Today, none of us would be willing part with a rupee, to use a radio. 

  Today morning, I passed a cow on the way back home from the milk booth. I happened to have milk, bread, biscuits and grapes in a large satchel. The cow stopped as we passed each other, and licked my arm. The natural thing would have been for me to give her something to eat. But I could not part with anything in my satchel. My ancestors lived on a farm. It might have been a small holding of a few acres. However, they had a few cows and buffaloes in a barn. They also had banana plants in the backyard, as we see in traditional Indian farmsteads. They not only had cows, they could also feed those cows! Though my ancestors might have been poor in monetary terms, they were rich in terms of the assets that mattered!

Blessed are those in whose ears falls The nectar drawn from sound of music, When autumn moonlight dispels the shade And the beloved draws near. From the Panchatantra Translated by A. N. D. Haksar