प्रेम (Love)

"All this time I have been actively giving my love, but the moment I receive it from someone and I have nothing to give back, I realize then that my vessel is too small to both receive and give love."

"What an enlightment! Its true that love is an ocean, and our hearts are too small to both share and reciprocate it. "

"God has made some hearts big and some small. Age and status don't matter to Him at all!"

My Peanut Friend

Once I shifted from east to west, I had to use the bus transport to travel. In my first week, I used to get down in the station in evening and board a bus from the east, which goes to the west, to my destination. I had seen this uncle selling peanuts for a long while to the passengers who boarded the bus from the east. Infact he was the only peanut seller so I was familiar to his face pretty well. Everytime the bus stopped and the passengers got in, he used to come inside with his tray of roasted peanuts, tied securely around his neck with a neckerchief, and make a simple living out of it. Now, since I frequently used the bus than I did before, my face became friendly to him as well. I used to just give a smile, and he'd return it back. Once, when I was weary from work, I finally decided to buy some peanuts.He packed the peanuts worth rupees 20 and insistently pushed some more peanuts in my hand. Determined to make our tabs of kindness equal, I gave him a peanut chikki as an "exchange" for his selfless generosity. Everytime I used to buy peanuts from him, he used to dish out more peanuts and give it to me just because I used to smile back at him and greet him, ask him how he was doing.This used to give him a sense of happiness at my presence. 

But I couldn't receive his charity.I always felt obliged to pay him back, to give charity.Because why would a peanut seller give extra peanuts for free? I was the buyer, he was the seller. Shouldn't I be paying him more? Alas, my heart was smaller than his. 

Once I cajoled him to let me "pay him back" for his magnanimity. He replied, money is not everything.It comes, it goes. But love, is important.The act of showing love is enough.Love is enough. 

How can a smile be enough? I ask to myself. Who is a bigger person here? Who is having a bigger heart? Love has got nothing to do with materialistic possessions. It has got nothing to do with the status of a human being, how rich he is. It surpasses all that you find outside on earth, because it is inside our heart. It can be so that the peanut uncle has a bigger heart than me, that he can accept my kindness and also return it back with his humble peanuts.Whereas, I am still trapped in the illusion that I need to be the one to give something more from my worldly possessions, which by the way have all been given to me by God. Instead, I should be asking God to make my heart bigger to accept His love from this stranger!

"Love is shown by Shabri when she ate jamuns to offer only the sweet ones to Ram,

whereas he reciprocated her love by taking it."