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130
PRATAP BHOGILAL - JOURNEY THROUGH LIFE
indicated - a path that appeared so obviously natural to him that he could not conceive that another individual might find it difficult to follow!
Being a self-sufficient man of few words, PB seemed unaware of the occasional need for verbal explanations and reassurances that prepare a person psychologically for facing, rather than avoiding, at critical points, even life's mundane challenges.
On understanding the difference between creating an income and creating wealth: I had lived most of my formative years in the midst of a North Indian Punjabi culture that celebrates the creation, enjoyment and protection of income - as a result of one's personal endeavours - as a laudable aim in itself.
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It was through PB that I was curiously exposed, for the first time, to a culture that views one's endeavours and the income created by it, merely as a means to an end - the creation, enjoyment and protection of wealth based on one's good fortune!
The incident itself was trivial and happened when I was newly married and did not know PB much. He was giving me a lift from our Napean Sea residence to my Charni Road office on his way to Batliboi. On the way he asked Harilal, the driver, to stop the car for a moment at the chemist's at the Warden Road junction, and, as I was sitting on the kerb side, handed me a prescription for some tablets.I got out of the car, bought the strip of tablets for a rupee and some change and handed it to him and thought no more about it.
The following week, my wife Dharini and I were at PB's Ridge Road residence for a Sunday lunch. As we were into the usual post-lunch small talk - which PB never participated in - he reappeared from his room and placed some money next to me - Re 1 and a few paise! I looked at him and asked, "What is this for?". He replied, "You paid for my medicine that day."I was completely taken aback and instinctively demurred, since, in the culture that I had been brought up, it would be a mark of disrespect to an elder to accept such a trivial sum you had spent, especially days after the event. I simply said, "I can't take this".
You cannot shake bands with a clenched fist - Indira Gandhi
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