Friday 11 October 2013

One in Six Billion


Today, almost everyone feels that human values have gone down and wants the situation to change. At the same time, no one feels responsible for such a situation and we blame others for this. As a result, no steps are being taken for the restoration of values and the situation is going from bad to worse. Once I had a very interesting interaction in this regard which I am sharing here. 

When I was posted as the Principal Secretary of the medical and health department of UP, I knew an officer who was trying to become the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of a district. For this, he was making all sorts of efforts and every one knew about it. Finally, he succeeded in becoming the CMO of a small district. The very next morning, he came to my residence with a small pack of sweets (perhaps in view of the size of his district of posting). Normally, I don’t meet any officials at my residence, yet I called him in my camp office. Presenting the pack of sweets, he hurriedly expressed his gratitude, though I hardly had any role in his posting. He also said that he was a victim of the system and many were responsible for his trouble. He begged for my permission to come again and narrate the details. 

I was amused at this behaviour of the officer but I took it wittingly. I asked him to narrate his story then itself instead of wasting my as well as his own time by coming again. At the same time, I gave him the option of coming again but with a condition. I asked him what would be the population of the world, to which he quickly responded by saying about 100 crores but corrected it to about 600 crores after realising that the query was about the world. Then I told him that if he wished to come some other time he should bring one person out of the six billion who would admit that he was responsible for being the cause of trouble to others. He was not at all prepared for such a response from me. His immediate reply was that it was not possible to find even one such person. I, then, told him that if there was not even one person out of the six billion who can cause trouble to others, then how were other people responsible for his troubles. By this time, he had understood my intention and disappeared, never to be seen again. 

The fact is that we ourselves are the source of our own troubles. We entertain unnecessary desires and then make compromises to attain them. If we trust the laws of Nature, even our troubles turn into blessings and opportunities. We, then, do not even think of any other person being responsible for our troubles, even if there is one or more.

Rakesh Mittal I A S

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