2004/
January 4th
Charity
takes the Dignity away!
I
do not tell anyone about the date I was born, and
if they insist I say November 31st. There are many
reasons why I do not tell. Similar was the case
when all the women and students asked me of my birth
date at my school (ref: www.korakday.com).
But then they were much smarter than me. I had given
the phone number of my mother to the women who do
not have a mother and now nearly all the girls know
her and their relation with my (their) mother is
like mother and daughters. But then these women
came to know my real birth date, which my mother
was only too much willing to tell, as I do not even
allow them to celebrate that (it was different before
in my childhood, when I would always insist to get
the best things for that particular date). Anyway,
last year they surprised me with a celebration when
I thought that no one knew. I didn’t wanted to take
that risk, this time but I knew very well that they
were planning, hush, hush, something big this time!
So I made a plan myself. Step 1, I would switch
off my phone that day as I knew that they will all
start calling me up and wishing me a happy birthday.
Step 2, I would not go to the school at all that
day and in place I would go to edit the documentary
I am making on the L’Arche community in Kolkata
(Calcutta), which is a rehabilitation community
for the people mentally challenged. But I didn’t
have the heart to just vanish from the school that
day and hurt them all because they would be too
sad and surprised to not find me at their surprise
party for me on that date. So I wrote a letter to
let all the women and children who were arranging
that thing, and the day before I went to the school
as usual and told them that I have this to say to
them:
”I do not believe in celebrating a birthday. A birthday
is celebrated by those who think that their birthday
is worth a day!
Let
me rather concentrate on making my works/actions
be much growing and good, rather than the day of
my birth. Let my good actions, good feelings be
repeated and celebrated, rather than a day I was
born. A birth date is of no importance, till we
have actually made good and the best use of our
birth in removing
the sadness/sufferings; fulfilling the needs/dreams
of people; trying more to love them by not making
them suffer but by suffering silently while continuing
to love and accept them whatever they do; not by
judging people by all the bad things they do or
they have done/said/ wanted to do, but by searching
for the good things they have in them.
I do not like when, just to offer
their regards/prayers, people go to a mosque/church/temple
and put up a “big show” there and return back to
their daily lives doing all the things opposite
to all the ‘similar feeling’ that all these religions
teach.
So please do not do anything on
my birth date and if you really want to do it then,
first you do what I have been doing by my trying
to love you and others with all the things I mentioned
above, to all the people around. It is hard work,
but it is the only work WORTH doing for us, the
human creation.
First you prove yourself by your actions, then you
celebrate my birthday, or else I will be SAD if
you still do celebrate it and that will make you
sad too, because I know how much you love me and
feel for me.”
I wrote this letter also because there are a lot
of enemy-things going on between the women and their
neighbors, relations, fellow-students. Many times
two of the women who are cousins can’t see each
other and both are my students and when I say something
or give more ear to one, the other would react…
and then they would try to bring their family things
in the class amongst the other women. I do not enjoy
or like this situation at all…
The way I challenge myself to overcome my shortfalls
and bad things, the way I am too pushy on myself,
to better myself as a human being, in the same way
I do that with all who come in contact with me too.
I have seen and worked with many organizations where
just anyone /externally-famous/ great-talker can
become a sister /priest /trustee representing the
person and organization. Simple people see these
fellows as their ideals thinking these ‘copies’
to be the ‘originals’ (Wearing the clothes of a
Mother Teresa or a Gandhi or talking like them,
doesn’t makes us them!) and thus the simple people
are highly mislead by these ‘bad’ copies.
It’s better for NO representations rather than an
incomplete /wrong /inadequate representation. Our
Soul looks for inspirations/ Faith/ something ‘true’
to trust. So lets make ourselves
one, on whom a Soul can trust, and can get inspirations
from. Then we would automatically represent Aamar
Nijer-My Own. Till then Aamar Nijer-My Own (ref:
www.korakday.com)
is always with you.
Anyway, I told them thus as above and I went out
of the room. The next day as planned, I switched
off my phone at 11.30 at night but I was having
a heavy heart, for I did not want them to celebrate
my birth date but I know about the preparation they
have done! The sadness I had already caused and
will cause them but I still could not accept these
celebrations because then it will become a trend
for every year. I was feeling hurt, about hurting
their feelings for me because their love for me
is true and pure, unlike the words of love which
we are too used to hearing in our daily modern lives.
So I was going through a bad time for switching
off the phone, as I knew many were supposed to call
me and also if I do not go I will make everyone
sad.
I was ready to pay any price not to sow the seeds
of that tree which I do not want. This sentence,
which I learnt as a kid during our science practical
classes, practically stayed with my life, “Prevention
is better than Cure”.
Anyway I got up in the morning of that day with
a heavy heart! This thing came to me, I visualized
the face to Saddam Hussein. No, not that Saddam
Hussein whom the so called intelligent-god-countries
of our planet Earth, who think that whatever they
say, think and do is the truth
and the ‘rest of the world’ is null and void, full
of fools and they think that these fools are only
fit for being killed and then whatever crippled
life is left in their nearly dead-bodies, could
be resurrected into slaves of this godly divine
hypocrisy of the world.
This Saddam Hussein I have here at my school, is
a very sweet and sincere child. His family is also
very sweet but then god has just given them sweetness
but no money at all. God has strange ways, god never
gives anyone ‘everything’ so that god can keep the
‘desire’ for heaven intact in them. So to some it
gives external things a lot and to most of the people
in this world it gives internal things a lot and
hardly any or no external things. So at least god
loves us more than we think it does!! But then my
experience says we get exactly what we truly ask
for. Remembering Saddam Hussein’s face in that morning,
gave me a very beautiful idea.
Like many of the kids here, in this particular place
where I have the school now, the mothers deliver
babies in natural-ways, in their homes and since
they have a lots and lots of babies, they generally
forget the date of birth of their grown up children.
So it becomes a difficult task for us to get proper
admissions for them so that they can have a good
future as they go for higher studies where they
need birth proofs. But from a child’s point of view
when they see the birthdays of other children whose
parents are a little bit more fortunate to afford
a birthday, or as they watch television and see
birthday parties, they have to grow up without that
date, which we all make such a ‘big thing’ about,
for us. When you ask their mothers, they say ‘put
any date you want’! I can’t think of my childhood
without a birthday of my own. So with that idea
I had something as my birthday gift from god (I
didn’t know a the time that there was another one
waiting for me which was equivalent to 6 Nobel Prizes!!).
With that in my heart, I switched on the phone and
till the time I reached the school, I heard lots
of abuses from many of the women and children who
stayed awake till 12 AM in the night to wish me
a happy birthday and made little poems for me as
I would not accept gifts and later they tore them
up.
I went to the school and told everyone that we are
going to celebrate today the birthdays of all the
children who do not have any birth date at all,
in this way the children who never had a birthday
will have one and those who think they want to celebrate
mine too, they can do all that with all the children
whose birth date was today, from now on.
I ran and got a big cake and all the kids had a
great time and the women too were satisfied in their
hearts and they told me that they were feeling proud
to be part of this inspiring love affair called
Aamar Nijer-My Own (ref: www.korakday.com).
That same day I got a mail from someone I didn’t
know. I could only open my mailbox at the internet-shop
two days after December 17th, the day when all those
above things happened. Someone who came to know
about me somehow from a country in Eastern Europe
and wanted to donate to me US$ 6.8 Million which
is equivalent to 6 Nobel Peace Prizes worth of ‘money’,
which the great people say, is the reason they are
accepting the Nobel Prize.
It was a difficult moment for me to deny that offer
when I am going through such difficult times earning
money for all the work, while not even getting time
to earn money. To make my brain understand that
this is only a test of god for me, to see if I still
have FAITH to make Aamar Nijer-My Own, a feeling
of LOVE working in the form of an organization,
where working
hard for your family to give them the best of everything,
is considered “LOVE” and giving money as a pity/ticket-to-heaven,
is considered as ‘Charity’. The
General Manager of Aamar Nijer-My Own is GOD.
If we at Aamar Nijer-My Own (ref: www.korakday.com),
have your good feelings and Faith in what we are
doing then that’s all we need and if you still want
to help us then there are many, many ways to do
it with us. For example by buying the things we
make or sponsoring the products we make here, to
earn money for all the works. It can give jobs to
people who make them, give JOY to people who buy
them and give education and support to many from
the profits of the sales of the “Gifts to the World”
from Aamar Nijer-My Own. And most importantly it
gives DIGNITY to a human being.
Happy New Year 2004 to you.
Let’s start this year, to appreciate the value of
Love over Charity.
Charity takes
the dignity away,
while LOVE only makes us grow as a better human
being.
Lets fill our
lives with LOVE, starting from today, NOW.
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