Jo Degaa Wohi Sikander

Last month I selected a few people from my blog list and had sent to them an appeal for financial help to enable a poor blind couple deliver their first child. Normally, a close friend of mine keeps aside a certain amount every month to aid education / health expenses of the needy. But in the above case, the expense (Hospitalisation, sonographies, medicines) was far exceeding her budget for an individual project. The response I got from my chosen blog friends was truly overwhelming. Some provided immediate financial help, some didn’t even want to go through the supporting documents I had sent to each of them, some others gave their verbal support/appreciation, some wondered whether charity is a good idea as it can cripple the recipient’s self-effort, one of them called me and said, “Who asked them to conceive if they cannot afford the child,” (and the person sent her contribution that day itself), while one said, “Arre Anjan, there is no end to this, how many people can you and me help like this.”
I was amazed at the total spectrum of thought pattern feedbacking an appeal made. Everybody was right from their perspective of life and living, and deserved respect for what they felt. We had sent this appeal to only about 25 people (out of more than 250) selected personally by me. And I wondered in awe when the youngest of them (she is only 26 years old) said, “This is the first time in my life that I am giving to a cause beyond myself, to a person (blind parents) whom I would never know or meet, and from whom I will not get any return ever. And it feels great.” We need to go through this experience once.
What we give is not necessarily dependent on how much we have, but on how much we feel indebted for all our blessings.
In my daily prayers, I never forget the words of St. Francis of Assisi…
“O lord, please grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love,
For it is in the giving that we receive.”

- Anjan Dangarwala