During the course of a Management Seminar, Mr. T.N.Seshan, former Chief Election Commissioner shared an experience he had while travelling in Uttar Pradesh with his wife. As they were travelling by road, they saw a large mango plantation filled with sparrow nests. Seshan’s wife decided to carry two nests to their home.
The police escort called a young boy who was grazing cows and asked him to bring down two nests and offered to pay him Ten Rupees.
The boy refused as Seshan raised the offer to Rupees Fifty.
The boy told Seshan and his wife, “Sahib, I will not do it for whatever you will give. Inside these nests are baby sparrows. If I give those nests to you, in the evening, when the mother sparrow returns with food for the babies and does not find them there, she will cry. I do not have the heart to see that.”*
Seshan and his wife were taken aback and felt small. Seshan later recounted that his position and the IAS label melted away in front of that little boy. He stood in front of the young boy feeling as small as a mustard seed. He added that after returning home, this incident continued to haunt him with guilt for several days.
Education, position or social status is never a yardstick for the measure of humanity. Let’s not forget that knowledge is to know and understand the beauty of nature. We don’t achieve anything by gathering a lot of information as long as that information does not get transformed into wisdom. And wisdom is useless as long as we don’t apply it in our daily life.