रहिमन वे नर मर गये, जे कछु माँगन जाहि। उनते पहिले वे मुये, जिन मुख निकसत नाहि॥

It was just a normal day. While returning home from office I stopped the car at a traffic light, and saw a man limping towards me. His ragged clothes, dishevelled hair and bare feet were declaring him to be a beggar. My instant reaction was to look to the other side, pretending not to have seen him. He almost thrust his head inside the car and begged for some money. I don’t know why I felt a sudden urge to preach him about the merits of hard work and to earn his livelihood; may be because I have been seeing the same reaction from people around me since my childhood.

So I was going to act like a counsellor and narrate to him the virtues of being independent, but then I noticed his eyes. I had never seen that much pain and unhappiness in any pair of eyes; perhaps I had never cared for looking in the eyes of any such person before. At that moment I impulsively changed my decision and stopped my car beside a fruit-cart standing nearby. I purchased half a dozen bananas and gave them to him.

That was a special moment. The man ravenously ate the bananas, moving his hands over his starving stomach, mumbling something incoherent, but certainly conveying his happiness and satisfaction on getting something to eat, perhaps in days.

So many times in life, in our hurry to move ahead and to attain our dreams, we overlook others who may need a little help from us. We never bother to see life through their eyes. For us our problems, our worries and our needs are paramount, and we live in that narcissistic world of self-pity; unaware that there are millions of people out there struggling for mere survival. We become so hard-hearted and conceited that for us even a little effort to help the needy becomes tough.

This life has been given to us only once, and it is the only chance we get to show compassion and love to fellow beings who may not be as fortunate as us. So before ignoring the plight of such people, try to understand that it is not a life they have chosen willingly. But we as the lucky ones can choose to help them, lend them support, or at the least try not to be judgemental.