CLEANING UP THE MESS













Pic.: Chandrashekar Varier

Some days ago, in my class, a few minutes before I was to start my lecture, I heard a final-year-degree student saying, “Sir, there is some water on this desk.”

Quickly, I picked a wiping cloth, stood next to the girl, and began to wipe the desk. It took me less than a minute to clean-up… but, it felt like eternity!

My mind was judging and grumbling: “She and her friends are watching me – their teacher – wiping their desk; none of them has the simple courtesy to say, ‘Sir, give me the cloth, I will do it’… What kind of graduates these kids are going to be? Whatever happened to good-old values?”

So, though I took not even a minute to wipe out the mess on the desk, the mess in my mind was only piling up!

And, this morning, just before our Tai Chi class was to start, I saw our young teacher doing exactly the opposite. Seeing the open area, where we held our class, messy, he got hold of a broom, and began to sweep.

“Sir, let me do it,” I jumped, immediately…

“A small thing, Gerry sir,” my Tai Chi teacher, who is many years less than my age, replied, in all his gladness…

“Sir, please… I will do it,” I kept insisting…  
                                                                                  
“A small thing, sir,” my teacher had cleared up the mess, by then…

This time around, the mess in my mind wasn't piling up. Instead, it was getting cleared…

Before the class began, I had received the subject for my Blog. The Universe – ‘The Mother Nature’ as our Tai Chi teacher would call it – was kind enough to send it!

After coming home, I shared the two episodes with my wife. She remembered her Yoga teacher. This Yoga teacher was a very, very reputed teacher, who had many instructors under her to teach Yoga in several centres. Yet, wherever she taught, before the class started, she would sweep and swab the area… And, when some students offered to do it, she would, with a grateful heart, tell them the same thing which my Tai Chi teacher told, today: “It is such a small thing, sweethearts!”

Yoga, Tai Chi, Accountancy or whatever that is… in life, teaching and learning, both, can be a joyful and enriching experience, only when we approach them as earnest students… yes, with a heart filled with humility, gratitude and compassion…

This morning, the student was ready, when the teacher appeared!


GERALD D’CUNHA




Comments

Vinit Desai said…
Humbling!!
February 9, 2015 at 2:18 PM
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