We rise by helping others

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Published: Thu 22 Jul 2021, 9:00 AM

One day I was working in my office. Just then my business associate came in to meet me. He was accompanied by an unfamiliar pregnant lady. She looked anxious and tearful. She must have been under great pressure.

By Dr Dhananjay (Jay) Datar

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My friend introduced her and explained the reason behind their arrival. The lady was a belly dancer. She was an immigrant from a war-torn country and had lost her parents. As a lonely orphan in Dubai, she needed to connect with someone emotionally. One wealthy person took disadvantage of her upright nature and promised marriage. She trusted him and left her job. They got married.


One day the truth dawned. The cunning man divorced her after she became pregnant and vanished, leaving her alone. The lady was caught in a pitiful situation. She was penniless, jobless and helpless. She didn’t have any friends or relatives who would help her with her expenses. My business associate was a kind person. He himself helped her and sought more help from me. I sympathetically helped her. The lady didn’t utter a single word but at the time of leaving she said, “Sir, I am ordinary, but I assure you that one day I will repay your help.” They both left. I soon forgot the incident.

A couple of years later I found myself in trouble. One of my stores was in a locality where a large number of immigrants from war-affected countries lived. Their teenagers had the habit of playing football. The team would play the game in front of our store’s glass door. The football broke the glass and injured our customers frequently. We warned the boys but they refused to change. We registered a complaint with the police but since the boys were minors, the police couldn’t do anything more than giving warnings. I was worried about tackling the problem. I didn’t want conflicts.


One day when I was sitting in a restaurant, a graceful lady came to my table with a child and asked me if I recognised her. I shook my head. She reminded me of our meeting two years ago. She was the same belly dancer whom I had met. She asked if there was any problem. I first thought, “Why should I tell her my business problem?”— but suddenly I remembered that she was also an immigrant. With the hope that she might know the parents of those boys, I told her my story. She smiled and promised to resolve my problem.

From the next day itself, the boys stopped playing on the street. When I thanked the lady and asked how she had managed this, she answered, “Sir, I pleaded with the administration regarding your problem and they took the suitable steps. Sir, when it was your turn, you showed compassion. Now it is my turn.”

How true is a quote by Albert Schweitzer, a humanitarian, “The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.”


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