Teaching a lesson with broomstick
It was at dusk when Malamma started sweeping the floor in my aunt’s place and suddenly threw the broomstick aside and said, ‘Azaan (Muslim prayer call) is going on we should not sweep the floor now. And then I noticed her red bindi, green bangles and a bottle-green cotton sari; a common attribute of the women in the northern part of Karnataka.
She belonged to
She is old, may be in her fifties but refuses to retire, which is very much evident by her active movements. Illiterate but more cultured than the ones who have many degrees in their name. A Hindu by religion and all she knows is to sweep, mop, cook rotis on the firewood, and also works in construction sites to earn money for a decent livelihood in
And the day I saw this illiterate Hindu woman paying respect to ‘allah’ in her own way, I was surprised. No teacher ever taught her that
Which school can teach us to respect other religion? When we join hands to pray to ‘our’ God we forget the basic teaching of all the religion is ‘to respect other religion.’ What is it that makes us think the way we do? Is it because we go to school and learn science and mathematics? She never learnt anything but she still managed to teach a lesson.
Sonali Desai
Tags: Azaan, Gulbarga, Hindu, karnataka, Muslim prayer, religion, secular, Sonali Desai
March 22nd, 2010 at 11:38 pm
Your story reminded me of an incident 4 years back. After darshan of Lord Venkateshwara in Tirumala, we were on our way to one of the restaurants for lunch. My dad overheard someone’s conversation that some of the ashrams located on the hills also serve good lunch for devotees and expect a voluntary donation for the same. So we changed our plans, enquired more about the mutts/ashram and marched our way into one of them.
In some ashrams, the dining area for Brahmins is isolated from the regular dining area. In other words it is ‘Brahmin only’ area, and people are required to adhere to a specific dress code. Since I was dressed in a safari suit, I needed a dhoti to enter the ‘Brahmin only’ premises. The only option was to ask one of the minions in the ashram, a clean spare dhoti. Luckily, there was one and that person was more than willing to lend it to me. His name was Vasu.
After lunch, I went straight to the cashier to make a voluntary donation and then changed into my safari suit. Next, I went to Vasu to return the dhoti, and while returning the dhoti, I held a 20 rupee note in my hand just to thank him for the favour. But little did I know what was going to happen next. Vasu gave me a very good lecture on human ethics and karma, I think even the ashram pontiff could not have spoken such golden words.It was very straghtforward and touched my heart.
I felt ashamed by my own action and asked for his forgivemess. Though he spoke a lot of things, I will just iterate the 2 important ones:
1. Not all human beings live just to earn money, some like me have a purpose in life and you cannot demean individuals like me with your money.
2. Janaseveya janaardana seve- It means serving humanity is like serving god.
Regards,
Pradeep.
March 25th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
It is nuggets like these that restores our faith in humanity. In the fast changing world we live today women like Malamma reassure us that everything is well in our society.