A New Experience...

I am writing again after a long long time. Maybe even longer. My faculties have been taken up by engineering and studies and hardly anything interesting has come up. The routine goes on, and its only when one moves out of it, does one encounter interesting topics which in turn can be converted into blog posts :P
So it was of the most convenience when my family and I planned a trip for my semester vacations to Gujarat and Rajasthan. As it happens with most Hindu families, the trip was planned around a plethora of temples and we managed to sneek in a few interesting places, in the radius of those temples.
This trip was coming after almost 8 years (with family) and around 4 years (with school to Goa), so I was looking forward to travelling again.
The part of a journey I look forward to the most, are the train journeys. I love sitting at the window, listening to beautiful songs, which make the world seem so perfect. This is of course before I remove my earphones, just stare absently at the scenery passing by, trapped in the recess of my mind, thinking over philosophical questions, which I don't have answers to. What would the life of these villagers be? So different from us! They hardly have any electricity, and when night comes by, its darkness which surrounds them for miles and miles. The only light and noise comes from the rumbling of the trains that pass by. What would it be like to be so alone in such darkness?
Of course that's not how they think of it. We city people are so used to human company , that we can never imagine life without it. It shudders me, personally, to think of living alone in a house, isolated for miles. Thinking such similar, deep thoughts, we reached our destination.
We went to a place called Srinathji in Rajasthan, where there is a particularly important temple of Krishna, which our caste believes in. There are 8 darshans there, starting from 4 am to 3pm. Getting up early in the morning at 3.30am, in the chilly cold was the biggest task !
Another thing I noticed there and which holds true for any religious place are the number of beggars living around the temples. I dont know whether the beggars come there because there is a temple, expecting food/ money or whether that place is just poor. Both scenarios are plausible. A narcissist atheist would go with the latter, since it would give him a chance to blame God and question his existence. I did my fair share of donation to the poor people there and I had very mixed experiences!
I was having tea at the tea stall and this person came by with his child asking for something. I offered to buy him tea for him and his kids. But he insisted on getting kaccha (unboiled) milk. My father refused coz he believed that he would then sell the milk and do something with the money. And there were many such people who asked for food products rather than cooked food. I relented and gave them oil, wheat and sugar to help with heir household groceries. All we can do is hope, that they used it for themselves.
But what struck me most and what was the highlight of the trip was the image of a poor old man who I saw everyday as I came out of my lodgings. He was pretty old and he had two rotis with him. As a cow passed by, he gave one of his Roti's to the cow. That a man would give half of his food, and very less food at that, to an animal cemented my belief in humanity. I know, one might say that he gave it to the cow coz cows are considered holy by Hindus. Whatever the reason be, he gave away half his food to an animal even when he was starving.
Maybe kindness, gratitude have nothing to do with your financial status. Gratitude is a state of the mind. Giving, is a state of the mind and a state of the mind of very few people. For me, the old man's donation to the cow was much much more than any donation done by these billionaires. Because you can always donate when you have a lot, but it shows your character, when you donate even when you have very less for yourself.
With these thoughts in mind, and my new found experiences, I came back home, filled with hope and rejuvenation, vowing to be a little more like the unknown old man, who taught me a lesson in life.