PANCHATANTRA - 5.COMMUNICATION

The students assembled around Vishnu Sarma in the evening and posed their query of the day….

Sir! . You gave us few examples on communication and the more we hear of it the more we realize that there is a lot more to it. Is it a gift of God?

Vishnu Sarma replied –

Well if you believe in that you may say every thing in this nature is a God’s gift. But what is more important here is that, whatever it may be, it could be acquired too by learning and practice.

I will give you one more example of this gift as you mentioned. One of our senior colleagues was to travel by Air once on an urgent work. He booked the ticket immediately and got a waitlisted ticket. Since his work was urgent, he decided to take his chance and went to the airport. He was little disappointed at the long list of waiting passengers, but wanted to give it a try. When his turn came, he handed over the ticket and was told ‘sorry sir !this is a wait list ticket and there is a long line ahead’.

Our colleague expressed his surprise and said ‘how do you say that. I got my onward journey confirmed and so you should try to accommodate me in this flight!’ The counter-in-charge looked at the ticket once again and said ‘I am sorry sir, I don’t find any onward journey in this ticket, leave alone confirmation.

‘Look here my dear son! See how old I am. I am over 75’ and pointing upwards to the sky ‘my onward journey to that is already confirmed. In the mean time, I have to complete these jobs and so I need to go.’ Replied my colleague.

The in-charge had a hearty laugh and promptly gave him a seat, using his discretionary powers, forgetting about the line.

So ,that is the power of communication. But this brings us to another important aspect of TIME. The time we are brought in to this world and the time we leave are not in our hands. So , it is best as he said to complete all our jobs in time to face the eventuality.

This is one of the classic things neglected or forgotten by many bringing many hardships to the people.

You know king Dharmaraja was asked 40 questions known as ‘Yaksha prasnas’ and one of the most telling questions in those is..

What is the most surprising thing in this world?

Dharmaraja replied ‘every one knows that death is inevitable. But every one behaves as if it does not apply to him!! This to my mind is the strangest thing in this world!’

Such behavior list is long bringing untold misery to many..like

Safety…every one thinks safety measures are for others, forgetting that it may be he the next time.

Timely duty…..every one wishes the others to be in time and fulfill their duties without fear or favor, but forgets to put it to practice himself.

The list is long as you can see..

It was getting dark and the students got up to go to their homes pondering over the moral.