In A Way I'm Like The Super Star!

Dear Sridhar Sir,

Excellent post. Not for a moment was i mislead by the title of the post.

After all, like you i too strongly feel that our superstar has many things to offer to people than merely his screen presence. It is lovley the way you have brought in the superstar and drawn a comparison with him to discuss something which is actually a very heavy subject. Our actions and reactions to myraid situations in life.

Yes indeed sridhar sir, so many times we react to situations in ways which leave us hanging our heads in shame, Was the anger really warranted in that instant, we think after we have reacted. So many times i have reacted adversely, though not intentionally and unlike our superstar in IL( you of course!), i did not have the magnanimity to rectify the situation either by way of apologising or by turning out a good deed which would have wiped out the negative and adverse reaction. Sure these instances come back to haunt me at times, but more often they get wiped out from the memory as they get replaced by more recent events. It is wonderful, the way you handled the situation in the train and though you might have helped the elderly man in order to quiet your own conciesness and to put your mind at ease, it did help him to get over the unpleasant episode. Surely this thoughtful and kind gesture of yours will be remembered more vividly by the elderly person than your intitial reaction to him.

I would like to share with you the one incident which keeps coming back to me. It was a beautiful display of thought and action by a six or seven year old at Istanbul.

I had been travelling with my husband and two girls aged 7yrs and 2 1/2yrs. We had been visiting all the historic and tourist destinations at turkey. Late afternoon we stopped at an Indian Resturant at Turkey( there is only one) for lunch. There was a lot of crowd and we had a long wait for tables. So we were sitting outside enjoying the busy tourist life while waiting for tables.

Along came a small turkish child( around 6 or 7 yrs of age). She was selling an assortment of toys for children. The colourful lights and music coming from the child's arms attracted my 2 1/2yr old. She started asking for the toy, now this was late afternoon and we were hungry and tired with all the travel, my 7 yr old was clinging on to my arm and i was not clearly not in a mood to pacify the litttle one by giving in to her wishes. So i tried to control the child and the child grew more restless and finally started crying loudly. The little turkish girl who was watching all this from a safe distance and could see that i ( she must in all probability have visualised a monster who makes her children cry ) was not going to give in to the little one's desires. She slowly came close to me , looked at me calmly and took a toy from her hand and handed over to my little one. Before we could react she ran away without even waiting for us to pay for the toy. I felt so ashamed of myself in that instant, could i not afford that little toy, was i so bad that i left the small one crying for it,somehow i could not control the various emotions that i experienced at that moment.

I quickly left the small one with my husband and took a coin from my purse and went in search of the little girl, i spotted her at one of cafes trying to sell her wares and i went and touched her on the shoulder and gave her the coin. She calmly refused, gave me a beautiful smile and went skipping down the road trying to earn something to pay for her bread. Still this incident haunts me and i silently salute the little girl and pray for her, she who had a huge heart to satisfy a small child by foregoing something that she was badly in need of...

With warm Regards
Jay.

Originally Posted by sowparnika

dear sridhar sir,
what can i say...there are only a few adjectives in my vocabulary, and every one seem to have used them previously... :)
anyway....all of us mistakes, but what differentiates people is the realisation of it and seeking oppurtunities to set it right...
it was such a sweet gesture of you ....

i have seen people who claim to be well-read, but are insensitive to other's feelings... what is the use of all the knowledge if you can't show a little love and concern for your fellow men....

as you say, the punishment for a wrong is the act itself...having to live with the weight of it on our conscience...

and btw, of course, you are the super star of IL... :)

dear sowpar,

That I made you exhaust the adjectives in English is a good feeling, though in the bottom of my heart, I still have a guilty feeling that all these are undeserved. For I have not told IL about the nasty fights I have had with my wife, my daughter, my near and dear. About my gross behaviour in a crowd and all. But in this particular situation I did what I said I did. I now feel that to classify a person as good or bad based on a single deed, or a few of them, is like seeing the snapshot of a woman when she was 12 years old, and saying that she is beautiful now at 40, when we have not seen her now.

i have seen people who claim to be well-read, but are insensitive to other's feelings... what is the use of all the knowledge if you can't show a little love and concern for your fellow men....

as you say, the punishment for a wrong is the act itself...having to live with the weight of it on our conscience...

You are right, Sowpar. Years ago a spiritual master said that we should not be swayed by pain or pleasure, loss or gain and should always remain the same. I was confused. What does he want us to do? Insensitivity can never be the road to enlightenment.
They say that Saint Ramakrishna was so sensitive that when he saw two men fighting and one hitting the other with an oar, he suffered the pain of the victim.
I have to rush to issue a caveat that many times I have been as insensitive as a log to people's sufferings. Somehow something clicked on that day and that made me write the thread.

and btw, of course, you are the super star of IL.

IL is a galaxy of super stars. When you write you are the super star. When I write, I am the one. And so is the case with every one. Somebody said, that in future everyone will have their own 15 minutes of fame. It's happening in IL.
I bow down to your love and affection in calling me the superstar of IL.
love,

Dear Purnima,
Nice to see you after a lo...ng gap. There are many, many instances that I have felt victorious and have fought like a rowdy and howled like a dog. About 16 years back we were travelling as a group to attend my brother's marriage. We were a group of about 30. The Railways had messed up with some cancellations. And for no fault of us the Squad wanted us to pay some penalty. My opposition was so vociferous, that the Inspector had called a RPF Jawan to calm me. I stood my ground till the last, and did not pay even a Rupee as penalty. The Inspector threatened to evict me. I told him that if he evicted me out of the train, the train wont even move an inch forward. He was shocked at my audacity.

But I liked the sensitivity you have shown towards a stranger. It requires a lot of guts and a good heart to be nice to a person whom you fought with, an hour back. I really really admire that soft heart in you...BUT....

thanks.

I am sooooo sorry I cannot equate you to Thalaivar!!!!!! :)) Can u swing eyeglasses does he does? or can you toss a cigarette high in the air and straight into his mouth as he does??? No! Not only you, my dear V noone can !:D I am die hard fan of thalaivar!

Not only that Purnima, I cannot come out of the house like Thailavar, sans pretensions, sans make-up. I might learn to toss a cigarette or swing the eye-glasses. But it may take lifetimes for me to shed my pretensions. That way our thalaivar is great.
love,

dear brindha,
Thanks for calling me "romba nallavaru" but I still remember the proverb, one swallow does not make a summer.
I feel that to label some one as "nallavaru" or kettavaru is itself not right. All of us are good at times and bad at times. I love this incident and wrote about it in detail because it was one of the rare instances where I was a "nallavaru"
And like a typical "kettavaru" I kept off the record the millions of instances where I was "kettavaru"
Against this one instance there are at least a thousand, where I have not apologized, though I knew I was in the wrong.

thanks for the love and affection, brindha. and thanks for the fb,
love,

Dear Vandhana,

Welcome back to my forum after a long time. I think the last time I saw you here was for the final episode of HE. I know you are busy contemplating a move-over and I can understand what you are going through. May God be with you and guide you with Her love and wisdom.

Remember the song Super star yaaru nu ketta? Now I will rephrase it a little:
IL superstar yaaru nu keta?? It has to be you .

Thanks a lot, Vandhana. You made my day with this remark.

I too went into some introspection today after reading your posts and trying to figure out some of my actions or words that may have hurt someone. Even though Sorry is such an easy word to say, too many take too much pride to let their ego go and be the first to apologize.....

Many times our pride does not allow us to say sorry. When Nehru was the Prime Minister he slapped his security officer who just prevented the people from surrounding him. Nehru was offended to see someone standing between him and his people and promptly snapped him.
Later he called the Home Secretary and explained what he had done. The Home Secretary said that the officer did what was there in the blue book. And he was just doing his duty.
Thereupon Nehru called the officer to his room and apologized to him for his act. So when the Prime Minister of the country himself did that, why not us? But with me, the poblem is, Vandhana, that at times I have an ego which is larger and stronger than that of the Prime Minister.

Like Kamla, i too love all your real life situation posts.

Let me thank you, Kamla and Vidya who made me change the basic theme of my next serial.

regards,

Sridhar,
You just acted as a traveller in a train or bus...no problem...but after that when you realised that it could have been avoided, you prayed to God to help you out of this situation..always 'manamurugi prarthanai seidhaal nichchayam palan undu' yenbadharkku, indha incident oru sakshi...
now you acted as a person whom you' want'ed to be or like you had portrayed in your serials.. it need guts to admit our ego and that too in an open forum...to you..which teaches us also a lesson...to avoid unnecessary tensions in our life due to these incidents...

very well written, sridhar...

sriniketan

DEar sridhar Sir...

wonderful post...it takes a lot of courage to go and apologise for bad behaviour to an outsider specially..maybe because we do not care enough to do that...loved kamlas fb about giving the burnt papad to her hubby and getting pleasure in having the good one when in a disagreememt with DH...I too have experienced that heaviness in heart when i have wrongly got angry and shouted at anyone..so u have taught me a very imp lesson.....oof..if only there was no such thing as an ego life would be much less complicated,no sir?.....and i have been lucky to meet rajni our superstar.....he is such a humble and down to earth person....and enjoyed the half an hour we spent with him though afterwards regretted being tounguetied in his presence....

mindi

Dear BF,

You have really gone where no human wants to go: Admit their fault & try to rectify it...

My parents teel me anyone can apologise with a Pardon/Sorry. It takes a strong person to actually rectify his mistake....

I do not know about Rajnikant....For me, you are the Hero....

Thanks for teaching us an important lesson in co-existing in harmony with our fellow beings..

Regards,

Your GF

Sridhar and Jaynat,

A quick poaching of your personal space here, Sridhar.

This one is for Jaynat. Jay, really loved the beautiful incident that you have narrated about the little Turkish girl vending toys. We often bandy statements like, 'child is the father of man'- it is real life incidents like this that teach us what compassion, sharing, selflessness and many such virtues are (see, with age and living, an older person like me even fumbles to identify and name the virtues, while a poor, child vendor hawking toys could easily live the deed)!! And Jaynat, love the way you have narrated this, you always have a way with words.

regards
Vidya

Dear Mythili,
you are capable of making me think deeper not only with your poignant threads on Amma coming or the Hyderabad Marriage or the CSR family; you make me think more with your simple, short fb.

While reading what you are saying about yourself I could not help but smile to myself.Why should you project yourself as a not so good man ,oh beware I am the bad boy,when all your friends including me know(I have not even seen you)that you are a wonderful humanbeing.Why?
I dont know,you have to answer.

This was actually my stopping point this morning. I could not just write a reply to this question. Why should I, I had been thinking for the whole day. When the boat swerved at Muttukkadu, when we were waiting outside at Sanjeevanam for our "healthy lunch", or when travelling down the Chennai roads in sweltering heat, I was thinking of this question. Why should I?
Suppose I don't issue this denial. ILites will think, after reading my stories, that here's an ideal man. Well, I love to bath in admiration no doubt. But being an accountant, I am also well aware of the risks. Suppose there is a grand meeting of all the ILites in Chennai! I am sure that by now the Chennai ILites number would have crossed 200. And let's say 100 ILites attend the meet and I am there. People will be looking at me in admiration. Let's assume the meeting happens in a big hotel. And for some reason I might pick up a fight with the bearer. Seeing my language and the way I fight, the 100 ILites might decide that after all Varalotti is an ordinary, fight-loving, low-class individual. And word might spread.
Well to avoid that unpleasant situation I am just making it clear that I am a fighting cock, no better than the person next door.

when all your friends including me know(I have not even seen you)that you are a wonderful humanbeing.

that did wonders to my ego. Thanks, Mythili. I can survive on this compliment for another 50 years.
regards,