Lessons in Life

Some lessons are learned the hard way. Some may be the turning points and leads further ahead the road.

Two things I learned the hard way are:

1. One should discharge his duty rather than being an ignorant or escapist. If you vacate your seat without discharging duties, some else is always waiting to take over your seat and may probably insult you in the days to come.

2. Once you are in a leadership position you should misuse the position to insult, humiliate or sideline the co-runner. A real leader is one who cares equally for the entire team.

What is commonly found lacking these days is the professionalism in attitude and discourse of duties:

1. What is decided in a meeting should be confirmed with whilst implementation. 

2. And most importantly, what is discussed during the process of a decision making in an apex body meeting should be made public. All such internal discussions that are part of decision making process should not be made public, and what is binding should be  the final decisions or conclusions arrived in the meeting.

Confession after 25 Years

A small, in fact a trivial incident happened while I was doing high school 25 years back. While doing the tenth standard, our class teacher was one Sr. Georgila. She was an excellent teacher who took care all the twenty four of us in the class with a real motherly affection.

One day while she was taking the class, I had a paper with me used for some rough work. I just rolled it up and instead getting up and putting it in the dust-bin placed in the corner of the class room, I just threw the piece of paper towards the front corner directing the dust bin. Somehow the paper lost direction and fell right in front portion of the class room. The free fall of the piece of paper drew the immediate attention of all the students in the class, including our class teacher. This indeed made her very angry.

Sr. demanded the person responsible for this to stand. None did. I could not gather enough courage to stand up. Sr again asked who is behind the mischievous act, this time more harshly. The class came to pin drop silence. I became more afraid or rather shy to stand before the class so that every one could see the culprit. The day ended on a bad note.

After this I always felt sorry that I could not tell her the truth, especially to one who cared for our class so much. And later every time, when the time comes for confessions during prayer, I silently remember this for some reason or other and felt always sorry in not been able to tell the truth.

Twenty five years passed by. All batch mates got settled in several parts of the world. Slowly every one forgot everything until recently social networks became popular and many of us started getting reconnected. Then came the WhatsApp. One of my old friend somehow located Sr.Georgila. She is now very aged, around seventy five and engaged in social service activities in a distant  northern part of the country. He also shared her contact number and photo.

By then, it was going to be the new year. I thought this is the right time; I shall call her up and confess before proceeding to the new year. I called her up and spoke to her for a long time. She was happy to hear about us. Then slowly I reminded her about the old incident that happened in her class on a day in 1989. Obviously she could not memorize a thing. Then I said I was behind it and said I am really sorry that I could not tell you the truth then while I was student in school. She comforted me and said its all o.k as such thing do happen with students.

Still, I was very happy and relieved as I could confess this, which I was unable to 25 years earlier.