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Be kind for the heart never forgets how it has been treated.
The heart never forgets the way it has been treated. I know a cook who would be around fifty. She rarely smiles. Sometimes when I have friends over she comes to cook. Her repertoire is limited. She can make about ten dishes all Punjabi style but lip-smacking. We have long conversations when we are in the kitchen. She told me she was working as a live-in maid in a flat in Mumbai when she was only thirteen. Her Madam and Sir would not let her use the fan even in sweltering summers.
So one day Madam and Sir had gone out she went off to sleep. They came back and rang the bell and finally when this girl opened the door after a short while, they really beat her for going to sleep and this little girl wept and cried, so they finally sent her home. She tells me till the day she still curses still them and she can still feel the pain inflicted on her.
A friend of mine had gone on a ten-day long trek. It was evening, the trek was over and she was sitting in her tent feeling cold. Her teeth were chattering so she went into the next tent. Her friends were there and one of them noticed her shivering. He quickly put a lot of kambals over her to help her become warm. Her shivering stopped and this act of kindness stayed with her always.
Another friend was telling me that when she finally managed to build a house of her own, she called her friends for dinner. The friends went around the house with a magnifying glass possibly to make fun of her house. In the guest bedroom, there was a peg attached outside the cupboard. They burst into peals of laughter looking at the peg. Till date, she could not figure out what was funny but she was so apologetic about it and the house she was proud of seemed like a joke.
Now they say to throw out toxic people from your lives but at that point, she did not know. Now they are no longer friends but still, the peg episode never goes away from her head and heart.
These are small snippets of how small acts of kindness and unkindness can impact one’s life. Both of these extreme actions invoke extreme reactions from individuals and the incident stays with that person forever. So, choose to be kind. Choose to impact someone’s life positively. Choose to be compassionate and see how the world responds to you.
Image via Pixabay
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This post has published with none or minimal editorial intervention. Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, individual posts do not necessarily represent the platform's views and opinions at all times.
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You may have wondered at our being on the quieter side during the last couple of months. Thank you for your patience, and we wanted to come back to you with a detailed note on what’s been happening at our end of things.
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