By Pradeep A. Shah, Chartered Accountant
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Namaskaar
Nobody is perfect. We have heard this time and again. Even
the moon has spots on it. Perfection in human beings is only in films and in
romantic novels of bygone days where the hero is faultless and is
personification of goodness and with one hundred percent of goodness in him. On
the other hand, the villain is nothing but evil, bad in every respect without
even an ounce of goodness in him. Let us not forget that roses have thorns and
that thorns too have roses. Hence, everyone has some goodness in his heart. It
is for us to seek that goodness.
In Mahabharat, Duryodhan represents evil. He is a person who
openly says “I know what is Dharma but I cannot follow it, I know what is
Adharma, but my nature prevents me from not following it”. In spite of this, one
finds that Duryodhan also had his good side. He stood by his friend Karna when
Karna was derided in the open court as being a Sarathiputra, a charioteer’s son.
Duryodhan made him the King of Angad. Later after losing the battle at
Kurukhshetra, Duryodhan was running away as a fugitive followed in hot pursuit
by the Pandavas. When he had no other escape left, he with his super powers hid
in the waters of a lake. When challenged by Yudhishthir to come out and fight,
he replied that to expect him to fight against all five of them was totally
unfair. Yudhishthir offered him to come out and fight any one of them with a
weapon of his choice. Duryodhan, who was an expert at fighting with a gada,
came out and selected Bhim ! It was clear that none of the other four Pandavas
was any match for Duryodhan in fighting with the gada. Only Bhim was; and
Duryodhan selected Bhim. He preferred to fight with a worthy adversary and face
death than seek an easy victory by selecting someone who was no match for him.
Recently there was a report of a person named Laxman Gole who
was earlier guilty of 18 offences of extortion from which he had managed to
escape conviction. He was being tried for 3 more offences when he happened to
read the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi. This completely changed him. He
admitted his guilt in open court and was sentenced to two years of rigorous
imprisonment. While undergoing his prison sentence, he converted a number of
co-prisoners to Gandhian way of thinking. He is released now and is working for
Sarvodaya Mandal and pursuing the noble cause of turning criminals away from
crime to a Gandhian way of life.
I cannot resist sharing this personal story with you. When
Amita and Nandita, my daughters were small children, I used to drop them to the
school on my way to the office. On a day in monsoon when it was raining, I gave
a lift to an Income-tax officer from the bus stop. This man was known for his
bad temper and rude behaviour, and had a habit of shouting at assessees and
practitioners alike. It was a pain to appear before him. I was about to drop the
kids at the gate of the school while it was still raining and ask them to run to
their classrooms. This Income-tax officer, otherwise a terror, chided me, got
out of the car, opened his umbrella and escorted both the kids up to their
classrooms. When he returned he was drenched. My outlook about him changed. It
underwent a ‘paradigm shift’. Such gentleness and soft heartedness was never
expected by me from this man. We also have to understand that people can change
and become roses from thorns. The story of Valmiki who changed from a robber to
a sage and gave us “Ramayana” is known to all of us.
Yes friends, thorns too have roses. It is nobody’s privilege
to be good. It is only that we have to train ourselves to look for the roses. To
be happy, let us seek roses amongst thorns. I conclude by quoting Gurudev
Rabindranath Tagore :
“Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of Man“.
