A Lesson in Generous Giving

Not far from where I presently stay is a residential Home for mentally-challenged people. Occasionally, I drop by there for a short while if I plan to attend a programme at a cultural centre located just adjacent to it. Generally, I take along with me some eatables—most often, biscuits—to be shared as a gift for the members of the Home.

Recently, I was in the Home, intending to spend some time there before going across to the nearby cultural centre for an event. I was sitting in the Home’s office, chatting with one of the senior staff members when a lady came in. She explained that her son, a qualified medical doctor, had received his first-ever salary, and that he wanted her to donate a sum of money from it to the Home. He was working in a distant city and had asked his mother to make the donation to the Home for him, which was why she had come there.

Now, that, I thought, was such a lovely gesture! What a noble way to launch one’s professional life! I don’t remember what I did with my first-ever earnings, which happened almost half a century ago. Maybe I used it all on myself and didn’t give any of it to a worthy cause. Maybe I didn’t even know that one could (leave alone should) do anything like that!

The lady scanned the Home’s QR code that had been put up on the wall and made her donation. And the amount? When I thought about it later, it struck me that it was exactly 100 times the cost of the biscuits I had brought along that evening for the members of the Home! Now, I oughtn’t denigrate my gesture, and I know what’s most important in any such act of kindness is the intention behind it and not necessarily always its quantum, but the lady and her son, by their ample generosity, definitely taught me that day a precious lesson in unstinted, love-filled giving!