The good you do, comes back to you , The evil you do remains with you
A woman baked chapatti
(roti) for members of her family and an extra one for a hungry passerby.
She kept the extra
chapatti on the window sill, for whosoever would take it away. Every day, a
hunchback came and took away the chapatti.
Instead of expressing
gratitude, he muttered the following words as he went his way:
“The evil you do, remains
with you:
The good you do, comes
back to you!”
This went on, day after
day.
Every day, the hunchback
came, picked up the chapatti and uttered the words:
“The evil you do, remains
with you:
The good you do, comes
back to you!”
The woman felt irritated.
“Not a word of
gratitude,”
she said to herself…
“Everyday this hunchback
utters this jingle! What does he mean?”
One day, exasperated, she
decided to do away with him.
“I shall get rid of this
hunchback,”
she said.
And what did she do?
She added poison to the
chapatti she prepared for him!
As she was about to keep
it on the window sill, her hands trembled. “What is this I am doing?” she said.
Immediately, she threw
the chapatti into the fire, prepared another one and kept it on the window
sill.
As usual, the hunchback
came, picked up the chapatti and muttered the words:
“The evil you do, remains
with you: The good you do, comes back to you!”
The hunchback proceeded
on his way, blissfully unaware of the war raging in the mind of the woman.
Every day, as the woman placed the chapatti on the window sill, she offered a
prayer for her son who had gone to a distant place to seek his fortune.
For many months, she had
no news of him.. She prayed for his safe return.
That evening, there was a
knock on the door. As she opened it, she was surprised to find her son standing
in the doorway. He had grown thin and lean. His garments were tattered and
torn. He was hungry, starved and weak.
As he saw his mother, he
said, “Mom, it’s a miracle I’m here. While I was but a mile away,
I was so famished that I
collapsed. I would have died, but just then an old hunchback passed by.
I begged of him for a
morsel of food, and he was kind enough to give me a whole chapatti.
As he gave it to me, he
said,
“This is what I eat
everyday : today, I shall give it to you, for your need is greater than mine!”
” As the mother heard
those words, her face turned pale.
She leaned against the
door for support.
She remembered the
poisoned chapatti that she had made that morning.
Had she not burnt it in
the fire,
it would have been eaten
by her own son, and he would have lost his life!
It was then that she
realized the significance of the words:
“The evil you do remains
with you:
The good you do, comes
back to you!”
#Moral:
Do good and Don’t ever
stop doing good, even if it is not appreciated at that time.