{"id":2723,"date":"2020-04-08T07:47:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-08T02:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/column.bankerstrust.in\/?p=2723"},"modified":"2020-04-16T07:47:40","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T02:17:40","slug":"the-gratitude-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/the-gratitude-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The GRATITUDE Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Last week I tried my hand at writing a short story, encouraged by an old colleague.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>A real life story. Many liked it. Confined at home, this is another attempt. A tiny story. If you like it, you too can share such stories…)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Wang meili. He could be in his late 70s. An old man with a shrunken but smiling face. The owner of a shop at Hong Kong Macaw Ferry Terminal, he was selling sundry stuff, ranging from clothes to shoes and bags and normal souvenirs.<\/p>\n

I was alone in Hong Kong for some work and wanted to make a day trip to Macaw over the weekend, just for fun. Many, many years ago.<\/p>\n

The shoo was not crowded. A nice leather bag caught my attention. I asked him its price. It was too expensive for me but I wanted to have it. \u00a0I started bargaining \u2014 bargaining hard.<\/p>\n

He was not coming down much but the smile never left his face; he was not irritated. After sometime, I gave up as I did not want to miss my ferry.<\/p>\n

I hired a hand-pulled rickshaw for the full day at Macaw. The rickshaw puller was taking me too all the places and explaining things in detail. We had lunch together. It was a nice day in Macau. I felt happy and tipped the rickshaw puller well.<\/p>\n

It was late evening. My ferry anchored at the Hong Kong terminal.<\/p>\n

I searched for the shop. To my relief, it was still open with no customer around. Once\u00a0again, I walked in. The bag was still there, unsold. I got very excited. I had a chance, I thought. And, I started bargaining again. I wanted to grab it.<\/p>\n

The man was not reacting. He stuck to his morning price offer but was listening to me with patience. All the while, the smile never left his face.<\/p>\n

Then, he offered me a cookie to eat. After I finished eating that, he put his arm around me with affection, and told me: \u201cGentleman: You can\u2019t have this bag because you don\u2019t have the money to buy it.”<\/p>\n

What’s the big deal, I thought.<\/p>\n

He continued: “What does this mean? You don\u2019t deserve it. Come back one day when you deserve it and take it from me. I may not have the same bag on that day but there could even better and more expensive ones that you’d pick up. Remember, everything has a price tag attached. You must earn this bag. Don\u2019t be a beggar.\u201d<\/p>\n

I left the place quietly with probably the greatest lesson in life. It\u2019s no philosophy.<\/p>\n

From him, I learnt what is self respect.<\/p>\n

I have been to the Ferry Terminal once more, a few years back, but could not find him. I located the shop. Wang meili’s son was managing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Last week I tried my hand at writing a short story, encouraged by an old colleague.\u00a0A real life story. Many liked it. Confined at home,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2725,"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723\/revisions\/2725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}