A single act of kindness can mean the world to someone in need

(By Mallika Sarabhai)

Sometimes in life once faces such odds or blocks that one is totally lost, disheartened, defeated. One needs more than just reassurances. People with faith in prayer, pray. Some cry. Some go to their psychiatrists, drink, take drugs or sleeping tablets.

I have two particular stories that keep me sane. Walking on a beach in England on a cold and windy day a man saw a young child at a distance picking up something from the beach and throwing it into the water, then walking a bit and doing the same.

Coming closer he realised that the boy was picking up starfish stranded on the beach. Looking around him the man saw that the beach was littered with stranded starfish."You are never going to save all the starfish. Its going to make no difference". Throwing a starfish into the water the boy replied, "It is to this one".

Another story was told to me by my film maker, artist, author friend Manohar Aashi. I was going through one of the darkest periods of my life. I felt totally betrayed by colleagues I had trusted for over a decade. Bitter, angry. And Manohar told me the following story.One day a rishi sat meditating on the banks of a river. On the opposite bank sat a fisherman fishing and vaguely watching the rishi. Soon a scorpion made its way to the rishi's thigh and stung him. The rishi opened his eye, picked the scorpion up carefully, got up and put it down at a distance. The rishi then went back to meditating.A while later the fisherman saw the scorpion making its way up the rishi's thigh once more and the process was repeated. Over the next hour the scorpion persistently went and stung the rishi and the rishicalmly put it at a distance. Able to bear it no longer the fisherman waded across the river to the rishi and asked him reverentially, "Maharaj. I can understand that it is against your dharma to kill, but may I please be allowed to kill the scorpion to stop it biting you?" The rishi looked up and smiled. "

The scorpion's dharma is to poison. My dharma is to be forgiving and understanding. If I behaved or allowed you to behave in the manner of the scorpion, how would I be different from it?"

The story transformed me. I suddenly understood that the betrayed of others, the breach of trust could not affect my trusting people. That I could not let badness drown my truth and trust in people out. And it was as if a load came off my back.

Over the years I am often asked how one can make a difference to such huge issues that face the nation, how much one person can do against such odds. And I tell them of the saved starfish and the little boy. Each life that we can make a difference in, even the tiniest of difference, leads to ripples that we can perhaps never fathom.

I remember when I was making my second film, Mutthi Bhar Chawal in a slum in Mumbai. I was 17 and had just lost papa. One day a young man cam shyly to me in the chawl and asked that I spare five minutes to go to kholi. In a break in the shoot I followed the boy through a labyrinth. He took me into a dark kholi and with a candle showed me a photo on the wall. It was him and papa.

He said, "I went to him when I came first in school. I told him that I wanted to be a scientist and work for India. He asked me a few questions and then wrote a note to someone. Because of that I am now in my finalyear in IIT."

Our trust and kindness can actually stir the world of goodness and generosity. And even if we don't do more, we can make a difference to that one starfish, and ensure that we do not slide into the behaviour of the scorpions.