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THE FOUR LESSONS OF MY LIFE
A pandemic gets you thinking...thinking of just about everything and anything. It’s a cacophony of thoughts, some mundane as, will I get my online deliveries on time, to serious ones, like will I be on house arrest for the rest of my life? Locked in for four months (and may be even more), one wonders about ' what really matters '..You take every day as it comes and you realise that life in all its complexities, is precious. So, while we binge on Netflix and bake banana bread, here are some lessons that I have learnt along the way...
Lesson One: Power, Positions and Posts don't really matter...what matters is your family. And when I say family I mean the family that you create....Not your chacha batija, mama mami, bhai behan ke bacche..In your sunset years, when you start the walk towards that horizon and if you happen to look back, you'll only find your family looking at you... So nurture them...keep them happy. In your quest to reach the top, don't neglect the ones that love you...
Lesson Two: Be grateful...practice gratitude. We go to a restaurant, look through the menu and order the food that we want. But all of a sudden we suddenly want the food that has been ordered by someone at the next table...we tend to forget that what we have is what we desired. Be grateful for everything, for every sunrise & every sunset...many don't get to see it.
Lesson Three: Never indulge your children...Don't think of them as extraordinary...As ordinary beings, they'll do extraordinary things and you can then silently bask in their glory...Teach them to accept a "NO"...in the years to come they'll come back and say "THANK YOU"...
Lesson Four: Grow some roots...you should have a place to put up your feet, where there is warmth and contentment; It can be big or small, on a hill or a slope but It should be a place that you can call Home.
Sandhya Ganapathy
W/o Shri M. A. Ganapathy, IPS SDG, APS
PostScript...My father was an eminent botanist. He authored 25 books and had more than 125 papers to his credit. He discovered 125 plant species and had nearly 75 species named after him...But in the last few months leading to his death, he could not even identify a jasmine flower...he would twirl this small white petalled flower around his fingers, inhale its fragrance & look, in awe. And yet, as his beautiful life ebbed away from him, he recognised only us... My mom & me..What remains of that day, his final day, was he looking at us with love and longing at the Family he made.
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