A QUESTION

All Indians must have heard the childhood story of Mahatma Gandhi: when a school inspector came to his school and took a test of the students by dictating five words and Mahatma Gandhi had wrongly spelled a word. Even after the teacher’s instruction to rectify his mistake by peeping into his neighbor’s copy, he didn't do it.

What followed this story is very much known to everybody. The fact is, this incident has become just a ‘story’ for everybody. Such honesty is considered to be seen only in stories. Almost everybody seem to consider that, such incidents can happen in a story and real incidents present a complete different scenario. Or may be even, occurrence of such incidents is limited only to the lives of great people is another way of thinking. But, a thing to ponder over, when such incidents happened in the lives of great people, they were as ordinary as we are now, but, what they did then, and how they did it, made them great. They never did certain things with an intention to be great and good. They did those because they felt it as the right way of doing things. They responded to certain situations in a special way, not intending to make it special. They responded that way because, it was their spontaneous self. They never "planned" to behave good. They behaved well because they were actually good. That is what distinguished them from others. That is what made the difference.

But…..

This was just a one sided view. All great men were great but, there were and there are some honest people who never made it large. For some, conditions were unfavorable, for some resources (not exactly material resources)were the major hindrance and for some, just being honest did not turn out.

Yeah, it’s true; at least if seen from the perspective of today’s “realistic world”. Yeah, values like honesty, truthfulness, sincerity are outdated in today’s times. Those who speak loudly of such values are considered to be dumb and psychotic. If ever, anybody wants to be honest or do something good, the generation kicks the person hard, they are discouraged to a great extent and sometimes even jeered upon.

Well, everybody knows what happens. Most people would have seen this happen. After all it’s a regular scenario everybody is acquainted, well acquainted, with. But is it really mad to clutch to our values??? If you yourself can’t adhere to the values, why do you disgrace those who respect and have faith on them?! What I want to tell is: I agree that today’s world has become unethical to a certain extent and values are outdated, but what about people who still adhere to such things.

What say?

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