# 31 - A New Beginning - I

His entire life, he had always stood by one principle - everything happens for our own good. No matter how harshly life treated him he would always come out unscathed, at least in his perception. He would always find a ray of hope even in a mire of deepest troubles. He would say if something had already happened and despite the fact that it bore ominous results for you, there was no point in blaming others or the circumstances for that situation. Even from that calamity, you could always find little-little positive things and in the end you could say – ‘everything indeed happened for your own good only’.Angesh was perspiring profusely.

He was being defeated by his own reasoning. He wondered for how long had he been following this stupid dictum? In an instant, he got the answer as well, 49 years!

Angesh remembered vividly how that one forty-minute English class had changed his thinking forever.

No, not forever!

He was then in 4th standard when his English teacher read him a small story. Once upon a time, there was a King. One evening, the King was engrossed in a conversation with his counselor. The counselor, while serving fruits to him, accidentally put a small cut on King’s right hand index finger. The King was so enraged at the counselor’s impertinence and impropriety that he ordered him to be put behind the bars. Early next morning, the King went to hunt animals in the jungle. There, while chasing a deer he himself became a prey instead; somehow he found himself face to face with a lion. The King lay on the ground beset with exhaustion and the mortal fear. The lion calmly circled him twice and went his way without hurting the King. More than being grateful, the King was bewildered at the lion’s generosity in sparing his life. After reaching safely to his palace, the first thing he did was to summon his counselor, and asked for an explanation for the extraordinary turn of events. The counselor in his calm disposition replied that the lion certainly would have devoured him to pieces had he hadn’t gotten any cut on his index finger. He added that a lion never liked his prey to be stale. He put an end to his explanation with a divine statement, ‘everything happens for our own good’.A blaring horn put Angesh back to reality.

He had been walking for the last two hours on a dark and lonely highway. He frantically waved his hand at the passing truck and the truck just passed by. It was the third truck in two hours and also the third, which didn’t stop. He was stranded in the middle of nowhere. It was 2 am in the morning and his car had broken down. The events of the last twenty four hours had left him totally disillusioned.

He had never felt so helpless in his life. He had weathered numerous ups and downs but this was just too much to handle.


© 2008 Ankur Shanker
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