Innate Kindness

This incident remained with me for a long time, I’ve not forgotten it till now. I must have been seven or eight then, this happened in Bombay in my Nani’s house, where my 2 brothers and I would go from Delhi to spend our long summer vacations.

My Nani lived in a huge house with a most beautifully-designed garden with lots of coconut and other fruit trees and a huge variety of flowering plants. The house had a wooden main gate, with a smaller gate in-built for people to go in and out. As kids we hung out near the gate as there was a little ‘niche’ next to it, quite shady.

One late morning I was alone near the gate when a woman with a small child came begging. She looked very ragged, dirty and very harassed. The infant in her arms was even more pitiful and malnourished (this sight is still common at traffic signals in big Indian cities). Totally overwhelmed, I stared at her and her kid … then could not wait … had to do something, so I told the gardener who was around to give her some money but he refused saying that begging should not be encouraged. By then the woman was inside the gate, still begging. By now I had made up my mind to help this woman so I ran upstairs to my Nani and explained the woman’s plight. My Nani sensed my anxiety, and said instead of money we could find her some old clothes. I rummaged through her drawers to find some; I wanted the woman to wear these clothes but she was quite filthy and needed a wash. The gardener and I led her to the tap behind the house where she bathed and then bathed her child. The infant was soon crying .. he was hungry. Next was to organise some food .. As soon as the plate of rice and dal was placed in front of her she began eating hurriedly.

I can’t remember if she fed her child the food (or was he too young for anything but breast-feeding), but I do recall that after the kid was all clean and dressed-up, he ended up shitting in his clean clothes!

I watched the rest of this from the window upstairs as by then I wanted to move away, happy and satisfied but not wanting to face the woman. I remember both my grand-parents were very proud of me.

Now when I think back, some basics of life are being bathed, clothed and fed but this woman in my childhood needed more. It left me thinking .. Did her husband leave her? Did she have a home? Where would her next meal come from?

As I said, this incident remained with me for long afterwards (like forever!) as it was done on my own, without motive, totally spontaneously. This profound feeling was prompted by her pain, and totally selfless. All I knew that I had made this woman’s day, not expecting anything back in return.

Children are instinctively kind and compassionate, this does not need to be taught to them, they only need timely encouragement. Certainly parents and grand-parents lend their own influence initially, my grandmother was so constructive and supportive that I not only learnt a lot from that episode but we all felt so good after that.