A Lesson Well Learnt- A Short Story

 Photo Credits- Jonathan Sir (Staff Advisor -HIVE, LSR)

I was six when I first learnt to ride a bicycle. My grandfather, Dr. Manohar Lal Sharma, taught me how to always take charge and look forward.

“Dada! I am feared” I cried out.

“There is no need to be afraid, son”, he looked at me, his eyes indicating correction of vocabulary. “It’s no big deal. Remember this. You should be the one taking control, and not the one being controlled by this two-wheeler. You master the art of cycling and you have learnt life’s most important lessons. A- You are the boss of your life. B- Life needs a balance to move steadily. C- You are the rider. So you decide where you go, which route you take and in what speed you move in, towards your destination. D- No matter what happens, it is important to keep peddling. The moment you give up and stop, your life will stop functioning in the way it is supposed to.”

I wonder how he did it. Each time I came up with a new problem, he would somehow connect it to life and its teachings, often making the subject of my problems a metaphor for life or “real-life” crisis. My grandfather was one of the wisest people I have met till date. Every morning, he woke up before sunrise, wore his leather chappals and set out for a good long walk across the district. That leather footwear had always been special to my grandfather. I used to buy myself a new pair of shoes once in every ten months, but my grandfather had been using the same brown leather ones from the time I could remember his existence. “Great footwear carries one to great places” were the words he chose when I asked him why he would not call for a change. “These were gifted to me by my father when I turned thirty. They belonged to him. He was a great man.” I never followed this about the Indian way of thinking, where people tend to attach themselves sentimentally to the things that belonged to their predecessors. I sometimes thought it was rather quixotic on my dada’s part to wear the same old footwear whose stitches were not as strong as they were supposed to be, any longer, just because it belonged to his father. However, it worked for him so I could not argue much. The footwear carried him to every corner of this country. While my shoes used to wear away within a year, his slippers were right intact, except for a few stitches loosening here and there. Moreover, on account of its squeaky sound, it was easier for me to discover that he is approaching my room which buys me enough time to hide my mid-night snacks under the bed and feign sleep. As a child, I used to try wearing the slippers and walk around the house pretending to be my Dada. My feet fumbled loosely in the over sized leather. When my grandfather got to know about my act he chided me for doing so. I began to abhor those slippers from then.

One morning, I left the house with my grandfather. It was time for my first swimming lesson. As any other kid in the district, I was also to be trained in the Maikala Lake which was situated two kilometres from where we lived. As my grandfather stepped into the water and started warming up with initial laps, I surreptitiously hid his divine slippers behind the rocky corner of the lake, where he might not be able to locate them easily. After the swimming lesson, which was too traumatising to narrate, we stepped out of the lake. I had changed into the fresh pair of shorts, my “learners’ gift” (again a tradition followed to encourage the nascent swimmer), and started making my way towards my grandfather. From a distance I could see him leaning against the bark of a tree, his head hanging loose between his shoulders. I was fully aware of the saturnine expression that would cross his face when he discovers that his slippers were missing, but I had not prepared myself to face him that moment. As I came near him I had, if I may put it, the most heart wrecking experience of my life. In his eyes, I could see not just sorrow but pain of losing something so dear to him. I shrunk as the squeal of my guilt echoed in the hollowness of his heart. I wanted to jump into the lake for I could see myself as not only a culprit but also a coward who did not have the courage to run towards the rocks and return his footwear to him. What would my grandfather think of me? What would dada think of his only grandson? The little boy whom he has been nourishing with his wise, righteous words for the past eight years has failed him. My eyes did not leave his face. I just wished he could stop hurting himself. I just wished I could speak up.

Then something drastic happened. My grandfather looked up at me and smiled. “It’s just a pair of slippers. If they were meant for me, then I will find them.” I stared at him agape. Did he just push away his morose by yet another piece of his eternal wisdom? “Don’t worry, my son. I have learnt my lesson today.”

With that he started walking towards the house. I followed him like a shadow; the dark one, the gloomy one, the one with a shrunk character. Never will I ever be a great man like my grandfather or his father. As we reached home I dropped myself on my grandmother’s lap and wept. I wept for hours. I had asked her not to call out to dada. She tried to comfort me with her pats and hugs. She even asked me whether I was missing my mother or father, something she knew was imminent right from the day they passed away when I was four. She had even prepared a short way of consoling me for when such a thing would happen but as she started I nodded my head and pulled away from her. The last thing I wanted is to be pitied upon. I ran away from the spot and before I knew, I was on the street making my way to the lake. I picked my bicycle from the corner of the street, where all the bicycles are usually placed and started speeding up. As I was leaving the house, I heard my grandmother following me and my dada stopping her; “let him! He knows what he is doing.”

It took me almost thirty minutes before I collapsed at my doorstep with the leather slippers held tightly between my fingers. My eyes were still burning with tears and my hair was messed up with sweat and mud. My grandfather walked up to me and gently lifted me up to his lap.
“I am a thief! You should hate me!”

He just laughed softly and tossed the slippers to the other side of the chair, almost carelessly. “You are not a thief my dear. You are a brave kid. You stood up to what you realised was wrong. Now this is what I call Greatness.” With that he kissed my forehead and swayed me from side to side until my cry subsided to gentle sobs. I told him that I wished that I could someday fit into his shoes, rather slippers in this case.

Needless to say, he knew all about it. He had seen me hiding his slippers (I can’t tell how. I have never understood him and his enigmatic personality) but pretended like he hadn’t. That was a lesson well learnt.

My Grandfather was a great man. He taught me how to always take charge and look forward.