Politeness

            A virtue which I learned very early in life. Which every child should learn from childhood itself. It happened when I was 8 or 9 years old. I was travelling in a train from Kerala to Karnataka. A short trip and a keralite family were our near neighbours. Father, mother ands a son. The son might be 16 or 17 years old. The boy was very uncomfortable to sit with the rest of the family. So he used to go near the door and stay there. When the time to eat came, the father goes and invites him to eat and he comes with such sore face that I felt very sad for the parents. And when he came he found out that he didn’t like the food they bought and he started shouting at his mother. The expression of the mother was so sickening that I mentally called him names. I couldn’t forgive him for what he had done to his parents.
            And after years back, when my son said something of that sort to me, I just thrashed him, then and there. You might think, it brutal but for me, I acted on my own gut instinct because if he repeats it, he would think twice or to be frank, he shouldn’t think at all to speak impolitely to elders and especially to his mother and that goes to all children who has to live in the society.
            So  politeness should come from within. A respect for oneself and others through love brings out politeness. Its a necessity. We give children what they need but the first thing they need to be taught is politeness - The way to behave with others and to control their feelings. Just because they  don’t like somebody or something that they have the licence to shout at anybody.
            But that doesn’t prove that all kids are the same. I had a friend named Divya, her father was a drunkard and they both lived in a small house. Her father was a very nice man but he drank so much that he usually falls off the roadside or in the gutter and it was Divya, with the help of neighbours broght him home. I have never heard her grumble or fight with her father and he didn’t know, the severity of the situation. But one day, while Divya was out of station, her father drank and he stumbled in a gutter and no one rescued him and he woke up in the gutter. He felt very humiliated and asked his neighbour how come he came to be in the gutter and why would anyone want to humiliate him? The neighbour  replied, you are usually in the gutter, only thing is your daughter takes you out of it at night itself. So how would she feel taking you out of it everyday. He couldn’t believe his ears and felt sad that he had been humiliating his daughter on a daily basis. When Divya arrived home, her father was sober and cooking food for her. She was surprised to see a drastic change in her father. He broke down in front of her and begged her forgiveness. She didn’t know the matter, but she said, Dad, you are my father, I love you and I haven’t had any problems with you, then why are you saying sorry to me? Then he recounted his experience he had the day before. From that day onwards, her father never touched liquor. So now you know, politeness can both make and break a relationship.
            So whenever you see someone impolite stop him going further, because we are also a part of the society. Sometimes, you can become the change to the boy. Though he might not accept it, he might think later, that he had wronged. So for the time being, Be Polite.
Meena

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