Life would be a lot simpler if we admit our mistakes.
I learnt this lesson very early in my life – at the age of about 5 years.
My father was the head of pathology and oncology in a hospital at Durgapur (West Bengal) and my mother was a school teacher in a primary school. We stayed in a bungalow that had a spacious backyard enclosed at the back by a wall, that also served as the wall of the house behind us.
My father was fond of gardening and had converted this backyard into a lovely garden that had some fruit trees, surrounding a large patch of beautifully manicured lawn. There was a gravel filled path through the lawn, for you to go from one end to the other, without stepping on the grass.
The gravel stones were midsized.
We had just been taught in our kindergarten school to throw a tennis ball and had been told that the strongest amongst us will be able to throw it the farthest. The teacher had also promised a competition to find out the strongest among us. I was keen to come first in this competition and decided that I shall use the gravel stones to practice throwing with my arm.
I picked a piece and threw it over the wall at the back to see if I could cover this distance. My first throw barely made it across the wall. I inched closer to the wall and took a mighty swing with the next one. It sailed majestically over the wall and seemed to hit some glass, because I heard glass breaking and then an anguished voice of a lady saying in Bengali, “who is throwing this stone?”.
I was now excited. My action had got a highly audible reaction. By default, I had stumbled on to one of Newton’s laws!!
Anyway, to keep the practice going, I threw yet another piece of gravel in the same direction with similar trajectory. And this hit the target too! There was another crackling sound of glass breaking and another anguished wail of a lady asking, “why is someone throwing stones at us?” My mother who was in the house heard this wail and before I could practice another throw, she had come to the backyard, picked me up and took me inside. All she said, “Let Dad come and decide on your punishment”. That left me suitably chastised and certainly with a sense of deep foreboding and apprehension.
Dad came at 5 in the evening – his usual time. My mother narrated the whole incident to him in detail. I do not know what other fathers would have done. My father, all of 39 years of age, saw in this an opportunity to teach me an important lesson. All he told me is that what I had done was wrong and that I needed to go and apologise to whoever lived in that house.
I was stupefied.
He called our domestic help – a young man by the name of Ramji – and told him to take me to the house at the back with clear instructions that I had to go and say ‘Sorry’ to whoever lived there. With great enthusiasm bordering on glee, Ramji literally dragged me to the house at the back of our house, and rang the bell. A balding benign looking gentleman opened the door, looked at us and asked, “What is the matter?”
Ramji looked at me and asked me to say my piece. Try as I may, nothing came out of my mouth. Ramji decided to take matter into his own hands and informed the gentleman that I was the one throwing stones in the afternoon and that my dad had sent me to say ‘Sorry’. Somehow, I managed to blurt out “Sorry” and wanted to run away from there. Ramji held on to me firmly and prevented any such escape.
What transpired subsequently is something I was not prepared for. The gentleman took me inside his living room, called his wife (whose wails had got my mother into action earlier in the day), and asked her to get me a chocolate. He assured me that he did not harbour any ill will and that I could go back to the house. I was back home in no time.
Ten minutes later, this gentleman came home, sought out my father and told him that in his 50 years, he had not experienced what he had seen that day. He had not met anyone who would send a five-year-old to a stranger’s house to apologise.
I never threw stones at anyone thereafter.
That day I realized that saying ‘sorry’ is not easy. But it also taught me – subconsciously – that it is the easiest way out of a sticky situation.
In my professional, social, and personal life I have realised that once you own up to your mistake, the road becomes smooth thereafter. The trick is: to own up to your mistakes.
Bulk of the issues/problems, be it among individuals, societies, neighbourhoods or even nations, can be resolved to a large extent if people learn to recognise and own up to their mistakes and misunderstandings.
More often than not, a misplaced sense of ego or a misguided sense of entitlement makes us believe that our actions are justified. We refuse to look at the ‘other side’ of the argument believing all along that what we think is right, is right.
Recognising the fact that we could be wrong, or indeed, we are wrong, is the first step towards keeping a relationship going. Admitting that we made a mistake is the second and final step.
In my experience if we own up to our mistakes, shake hands and say sorry, animosities cease to exist.
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