The art of giving

When I had been to Germany in November last year, I also visited my host mother, Ms. Christiane Laehnemann in a city called Magdeburg. I had been there earlier as student and wanted to meet her again this time with Atul. She is a lecturer in a college and is a very well spoken and well read person. We visited her on a week end and on Sunday she took us to a nearby church as it was the first Sunday of Advent before Christmas.

We attended the services in the church, where there was a small programme of kids and then the priest spoke about the importance of Advent. It was a very nice experience. People were friendly, everybody smile to me and wished me. But I observed that most of the people present there were old people. There were hardly any youngsters or people of my age for the services. Maybe they didn't believe in God or didn't have time to attend the services on a cold winter morning. After the services, there was a small tea party where there were stalls of different items, which were up for sale.

It was a small hall in which the exhibition was put up. There were few items for decoration of the Christmas tree and they all were hand made by the people in the church. Rates were also nominal. There was another small room next to the hall, where there were multiple articles, up for sale too. But the difference was that all the articles out there belonged to the people attending the church and they had brought these things with them to give away, which they thought would be useful to someone else. They had used it enough perhaps and now they thought of giving it to someone else. There was no price tag on the articles there. People picked whatever they liked and put the money, they thought was good enough for the articles they bought in the basket kept at the entrance. Everybody was happy and everybody picked something or the other. Those articles didn't look old or used or tattered at all. There were books, CDs, cutlery items, show pieces etc. We picked a few items too!!

I then remembered my good friend, Raghu telling me that he had got a book shelf and a bed from the road side in the university campus, where people put unwanted articles on the road on a particular day in the week. One could just go around, look around and pick up anything which one likes for free! And there were not only small items, mind you! How cool was that!

I thought to myself, how much do we do for our community or our people in India like these people do here in Germany? Do we use the articles, products sensibly to pass them on to someone else? Do we return to the society enough in proportion to what we get from the society? Everybody needs to give a thought to this. We have a certain duty to our society and in some form or the other, we must give it back to the society.

It may not be always possible to serve the society in terms of money, but time, love and care are much more important than money many a times. We may donate books to a school or teach poor students on a w/e, visit old age homes and spend some quality time with the people there by reading out to them or simply talking to them. We can plant trees and encourage others to do so. We can also sponser a girl child's education, which is very noble I feel.

 Whatever little is possible for each one of us, we must definitely do it so that our next generation has something to cherish and live on.

I would quote a few lines of Govind Vinayak Karandikar popularly known as VinDa on the art of giving, which I like very much and is in my mother tongue, Marathi.

देणार्याने देत जावे - घेणार्याने घेत जावे - घेता घेता एक दिवस - देणार्याचे हातच घ्यावे

(Denaryane det jaave - ghenaryane ghet jaave - gheta gheta ek divas - denaryache haatach ghyave)

(Donor should keep giving - the receiver should keep taking - and one day while taking - the receiver should take the donor’s hand)

So when are you going to learn the art of giving?

:-)