IT IS LAWFUL TO DO GOOD ON THE SABBATH














Allow me to use one more leaf from the movie PK… It is the very end of the movie… After one year’… you read on the screen… “We are about to land in a while,” PK announces, obviously, he is back with many more PKs from his gola… But, now he knows some wired truths on this gola called ‘Earth’… so, he shares them with his fellow-beings…. Some funny truths, some dos and donts. I loved one of them particularly. “If you hear anyone say ‘I love chicken’ or ‘I love fish’, remember, it does not mean they have great love for chicken and fish… It only means, they love to eat them!"

Like everyone else did, I, too, left the movie hall with a chuckle in my heart… Only one more thing, I wished, PK had told his fellow-creatures… “Look guys, here, on this gola called ‘Earth’, if any one tries to tell you too much about rules and regulations, just remember this: He is a plain hypocrite… suffering from a disease called, ‘Crab Mentality’!”

These guys will neither do good nor will allow anyone else to do good… If I can’t have it, I will see to it that, you, too, will not have it… So, like the crabs in that bucket, which kept dragging each other down and, eventually, ensured their collective demise, these guys are relentlessly busy pulling each other down – blaming, accusing, defaming… worst, citing some laws of this land, not because they have great respect for those laws, but because, they do not want to see you succeed…

Plain jealousy… Petty-mindedness… yes, all stemming from frustrations and failures in their own lives…

When another person does good, you and I have the intelligence to note that it is good. Then, why don’t we acknowledge the good done by someone, appreciate it, support it and thereby, ensure our collective upliftment? Why do we do exactly the opposite… Cite some crazy laws and stop the man from doing good?

Because, it feeds our egos!


There was this man with his withered hands (leper). It was the Sabbath day, the day Jews did not work because the old Hebrew Law said so. Now, the people who had come to Jesus, asking whether it was lawful to heal a leper on the Sabbath day, were not the ones who had some great respect for life or law – whether it was the law of land or the law of God… they just had come to trap Jesus who went about his life doing good work. These men couldn’t see it… They were jealous, insecure, self-righteous…

And, what did Jesus tell them?

“Imagine your sheep falls into a ditch on the Sabbath day… Now, what will you do – will you leave it there and go, or will you gently lift it out of the ditch? How much more valuable, then, is a man than a sheep?... So, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath!”


The Pharisees and hypocrites are still around us… rather, they still live in us… and make us cite dead laws, pull others down… and, yes, yes – as PK pointed to his country-creatures -  go around harping…

“I LOVE chicken… I LOVE fish!”

Today is a Saturday… the day of Sabbath as per the Hebrew calendar…

Hope, I have not sinned!


GERALD D’CUNHA


Pic.: Chetna Shetty

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