The dacoit and the sage

June 2 nd , the day my daughter turned 21 .We wanted to mark it as a special day .Suggestions poured from all over but I had a secret wish …I wanted to throw a party for the children at the local orphanage .The idea was welcomed by one and all .So I set out planning the menu and the goodies we would take there I got the phone number of the institution ..contacted the administrator and had the list of the number of children there .our excitement knew no bounds .Just a week more for the D day ….the morning newspaper had the headlines ,Food poisoning in the orphanage and many children had taken ill .Reading the headline my husband eyed me skeptically , “So what do you think we should do ?” In the wake of this if we went forward with our plan we would be eyed with suspicion as there is now a case charged .” My enthusiasm burst like a bubble .Who has done this to the poor mites ? Was it left overs from a feast ?Would they feed their own child such food ? .There were no details (covered up as usual as per my husband ) .The next two days carried even worse news .The orphanages were illegal and now it was being looked into .I couldn’t believe this .First the children are poisoned and now this .I suggested we pay some money so that the sick children get good treatment “.And get associated with their crimes?” The police are looking into this and if you donate anything now there might be an enquiry on us .” retorted my husband .I felt cornered and dejected and to my mind came the story from an old Hindi text of mine .Maybe some of you too have read it in your school days .
The story is of a sage who owned a beautiful horse The sage used this horse to visit the needy and the suffering in the village .This horse was coveted by a local dacoit chief .He made many attempts to steal it from the sage .Each time he stole it from the stable the horse found its way back .Then one day the sage was on his way to a nearby village on his horseback .He spied a traveler lying on the road side .The kind sage dismounted and went to attend to the man .Just as he reached him .the man threw away his blanket which covered him and revealed himself to be the chief .He had done this to steal the horse .The sage seeing the chief made only one request .He asked the chief to take the horse but on one condition that no one was to know how he came to have it .The sage said , “if people came to know that you took the horse from me by pretending to be sick ,no man will stop to help a genuinely sick man if he come across one, fearing that it might be a robber in disguise.”
The times have not changed .The situation is the same .The dacoits still live in the guise of different organizations and charities we hesitate to help fearing these dacoits in disguise ..We turn our faces away from the genuinely needy and poor fearing them to be shamming
To come back to our birth day celebration .we had a subdued one as my daughter decided she had to be mature about such things now . We used the money to buy some winter clothes for the children of the construction labourers who live in tin sheds adjacent to our compound .