Theme : Selfless actions
Short Story 11:
The Man and Mango.
A story is told of a very old peasant who was planting a sapling of a mango plant.
The kings, invariably had the routine of going around their kingdom, incognito, dressed like a common man and mingled with his subjects. The idea is to have a first hand knowledge of his subjects and their problems. To check if his ministers and officials discharged their duties properly.
A king was passing by a remote village where an old peasant was seen busy planting a mango sapling.
He looked at the peasant and asked his age. Peasant replied that he was somewhere in his eighties.
The king then demanded to know as how many years would it take for the plant to grow and yield fruits. The peasant replied that , say, forty more years! The king asked if the peasant would be alive then.
The peasant replied in negative. But, he continued, “Dear Youngman, today we are enjoying the fruits, or in short, the efforts of people who do not live any longer. The roads, the trees you see today, we won’t know who created it. But we use it merrily.
It is not absolutely necessary that we should work or produce that would be useful only for our own needs or consumption.
The king was pleasantly surprised with the old man’s attitude. He immediately pulled-out a golden necklace and presented it to the peasant. The peasant was taken aback from the gestures of the strange young man and quipped,
“It took nearly forty years for getting the reward for planting and caring a tree. I am now in such a country that I get rewarded for a work even before I completed it”.
Theme: Perform, sincerely, always ! It is a matter of positive attitude. Know this:
(1) Most of our actions are performed in a distracted way.
(2) We react instead of acting.
(3) The worst of all is that, we perform always less than the best, that we are really capable of.
(4) Often, life offer no features to correct the past mistakes.
(5) If we have a positive mind set, certainly we would perform our best, every time.