Swallow Your Pride

Rajesh Hamal Rajesh Hamal, a veteran actor of the Nepali film industry, once shared his painful feelings of regret regarding his damaged relationship with his father who was against Rajesh’s career choice, via a popular television programme. An ego had come between their father-son relationship and they stopped communicating with each other. In such an estranged situation the father went to Pakistan as an ambassador and he suddenly passed away after a month over there. Even though Hamal still loved his father dearly, he could not express his feelings for him.

In another instance, Joel Osteen recounts a story of a sad man in his book ‘Become a Better You.’ The character of Joel’s is at odds with his father over a business decision, which leads to them cutting ties with each other. The heart-broken man says, “Joel, I knew deep down inside that I needed to make it right, but I kept putting it off. Then earlier this week, I received a call informing me that my father had suffered a heart attack and died.”
We can see the line between these men’s stories. Although they are from different contexts, they share the same pain of not having a healthy line of communication with their fathers and losing them unexpectedly. Their emotional guilt must be greater than anything we have ever felt. Yet, they cannot change their situation now; it is too late for them to make amendments. After all, what held them back from making the first move? Certainly, their egos. The same ego may have stopped their fathers from reaching out to their sons. And the consequences are painful.  The fathers might have died with regrets for not speaking with their sons for such a long time and the sons may suffer from similar feelings of regret throughout their lives.

Jade Goody(left) & Shilpa Shetty (right) 

On the other hand, the winner of Celebrity Big Brother UK 2007 and the Bollywood actress, Shilpa Shetty, swallowed her pride and immediately extended forgiveness towards her co-contestant Jade Goody despite the fact that Jade terribly and racially bullied Shilpa in the Big Brother house constantly. Unfortunately, Jade died of cervical cancer in 2009. Unlike Rajesh Hamal and the man mentioned above in Joel’s recount, Shilpa did not have to live with guilt.

All these three cases indicate that life is uncertain and we always have choices – whether we should or should not do something. Here the choice in question is whether to forgive someone. Forgiveness is a big asset that all human beings have at their disposal. Commonly, however, they prefer to hold on to their ego because it is a lot easier. It is found that sticking to one’s ego is useless; spiritualists term it “false ego”. We are usually in our default mindset of “I am right and everyone else is wrong”, but the truth is that no one is really wrong. The differences between people occur because of different perspectives on similar situations. A thing to remember is that a false ego never elevates us to be a better person but forgiveness does; Shilpa Shetty exemplified this in a manner that very few are capable of, and went on grabbing the world’s attention for being nice to her greatest critic.

The question is not who is right or who is wrong or who takes the first move towards apology, but who has the courage to forgive others and move on. It should be noted that by forgiving others we are not doing them a favour. Forgiveness helps us maintain our peace of mind. Outwardly, we pretend not to care about the person we feel is “wrong”, but the person dwells in our mind until and unless we settle the issue we associate with the wrong-doer. Forgiveness is God’s invaluable gift to humanity, and we should acknowledge and utilise this to the best of our ability. Therefore, swallow your pride today and apologise even if in your opinion it was not your fault. Doing this you make peace with yourself.

(Published in an English Daily The Rising Nepal on Saturday, November 12, 2016) 

[The pictures on this blog are posted here with permission from their owners or have been gathered from various sources on the Internet. If you are the copyright-holder to any of the photographs herein do not hesitate to contact me. They will be swiftly removed if desired so.]

Eye Opener

When I saw the title "Ankur Arora Murder Case" I thought it could be some kind of crime movie and full of violence so I decided not to watch at the first sight. Then my inner voice suggested, 'Just have a look and find out why Ankur Arora was murdered.' Wow! The movie was not what I thought it would be.

"Ankur Arora Murder Case" is a bollywood movie written by Vikram Bhatt and released in 2013. Mr. Bhatt has raised a genuine issue of medical negligence via this movie. Every now and then we come across the news stories, the patient died because of carelessness of the such and such doctor, or such and such hospital. As general public we just get puzzled by such stories and ponder, 'Was it really the doctor's/hospital's fault? Could the patient be saved if the medical people were careful? Why was this happened? What was the real reason of the patient's death?" This movie tries to address such questions.

Ankur is a little boy of eight years old who got admitted in a hospital for his appendicitis problem. The hospital is renowned, particularly with a very famous doctor, Dr. Asthana who is the chief surgeon over there. Ankur needed to go through an operation. He was supposed to be with empty stomach but unfortunately he consumed a couple of biscuits right before the operation. Even though Dr. Asthana was informed about this situation he was reluctant to postpone the operation due to his busy schedule. More importantly, he forgot to clean Ankur'r stomach before performing the operation.  As a result - Ankur died.

Despite the doctor realizing that it was entirely his fault he was ready to do anything to hide the truth so that he could save his as well as the hospital's reputation. Therefore he spread the twisted story:  Ankur died during the operation as some complications arose.

While watching the movie I could not blame Dr. Asthana 100% as he simply committed a human mistake. We all commit mistakes in our professions although we do not want to. Yet, it is natural that all fingers should be pointed towards him because he was the ultimate authority in the operation theater. His only blunder was not to tell the truth to the public. He should have accepted his mistake, told the reality and made a sincere apology. This could damage public-doctor relationship less.

[The pictures on this blog are posted here with permission from their owners or have been gathered from various sources on the Internet. If you are the copyright-holder to any of the photographs herein do not hesitate to contact me. They will be swiftly removed if desired so.]

Ordinary circumstances: Extraordinary consequences

When Malala Yousafzai was announced as the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize (another winner was Kailash Satyarthi, a children's rights activist from India), the whole world focused its attention towards her. She is the youngest Nobel Laureate as she was only 17 at that time; she was recognized for her cause to protect the right of all children to education.

There were mixed views upon her winning the Prize. However people wanted to know more about her. Whether somebody likes her or not she has become an international figure. But who is Malala? She writes her story in "I am Malala."

Malala is just a Pakistani girl like millions of other girls of her time and space born in a Sunni Muslim family, but a huge difference between her and others is that she got a very understanding father while others did not. Malala's father was very passionate about improving the quality of education; to serve this purpose he used to run his own school. While growing up Malala's playground was the school's classrooms. She started her schooling in her father's school itself. Her father was pretty aware that life was harder for women in their society so he was determined to educate Malala in a good way. He used to say, "I will protect your freedom, Malala. Carry on with your dreams."

On the other hand, there were people who used to see girls' schools as haram (against the religion). A man even tried to persuade Malala's father, " Girls should not be going to school. A girl is so sacred she should be in purdah (veil), and so private that there is no lady's name in the Quran as God doesn't want her to be named." Thank god, he would never listen to such people as he knew the truth.

When Malala was ten years old the Taliban came to their valley, Swat. With this, a lot of unnecessary problems were created. For instance, people were ordered to throw their TVs, DVDs and CDs and the Taliban would set fire on them. Only the Radio Mullah was allowed, and all music except for Taliban songs was declared haram. As the Talibs were against girls' education, many parents started to take their daughters out of schools; some teachers even refused to teach girls. But nothing scared Malala's father and his determination encouraged Malala to continue her schooling.

During that time a lot of killing, bomb blasting and suicide bombing were happening, so people were frightened and they felt unsafe. The same would apply to Malala's family as well. Malala would ask her father, "Are you scared now?" and he would reply, "At night our fear is strong, Jani (love), but in the morning, in the light, we find our courage again. We must rid our valley of the Taliban, and then no one has to feel this fear".

A turning point came into Malala's life when no female teachers and girl students at her school agreed to write a diary about life under the Taliban because their families considered the act too dangerous. In fact this offer had come from a BBC radio correspondent based in Peshawar. Apparently no one was ready to share their experience, so Malala stood up with her determination, "Education is our right just as it is our right to sing." Obviously, her father allowed her to raise her voice via the diary. As soon as her diary entries started to appear on the BBC Urdu blog the world people began to learn about the Swat predicament under the Taliban.

On the one hand the Taliban were banning and burning down the schools; the father-daughter team of Malala was busy campaigning for children's right to education in different parts of the country. Malala would frequently be seen, heard or read in the media with her strong voice. Soon she was recognized as an activist for the right to education. As a result she was in the hit list of the Taliban. At that time she was just 11-12 years old. Perhaps it was for sure Malala was shot by a Taliban gunman on 9 October, 2012 while she was coming home on a bus after school. From this point on people have been following Malala's life .

Malala gives a hope to every girl that she can be another Malala if she gets unconditional parental support at right time and in a right way.