After Radhashtami 2002, I went to a few different towns in India to give some programs. I did not really do much religious preaching program anymore. I only went to very few selected families who were closer than others. These families were not relatives but I had had a relation to them for many years and so it felt almost as though they were related by blood. We shared love and many feelings and that was the reason for me to also go there and give programs.
I stayed with a family with whom I had been many times before and who had a boy who was twelve years old. I had seen him grow up and of course he had grown even a lot more in the years that I spent in the cave. When I love someone and have those feelings of being a family, I completely trust and see them as brothers and sisters and their children as my children. When this young boy now told me that he very much wanted to have a bicycle and asked whether I could buy him one, I did not think for one second and told him that I would of course go to a shop with him and get one. I actually said of course, let’s go right away!
The boy obviously got excited and went to get ready. I also got ready and when I went by the kitchen door, I heard that the boy was in there, talking to his mother. The moment I passed there, I heard her say ‘Take the most expensive one in the shop!’
This sentence made me stop for a second but then I moved on. It had been like a thorn into my heart. This one sentence made me feel used and taken advantage of. Are you teaching your child how to cheat those who are close to you? Those, who give from their heart, generously and with love? Take as much as you can. Don’t take what you want, what you like or what you need but take the most expensive one. You can imagine how troubled I was within.
I knew however that it was not the boy’s fault and so I went with him to the shop, just as planned. He chose a bicycle and I bought it for him without checking the prize or seeing whether it was the most expensive one or not. I did not talk to the family about it either. From that moment on however I kept in mind that they had financial expectations on me and that they did not see me as close as I saw them. Since then this feeling of being a close family changed slightly but I kept the relation and shared my love in the following years, too.
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That must have been very disappointing. I hate whenever such situations occur in which we have to pretend not knowing something. It is a pretense but sometimes a necessary one. I have to admit that I was never in a situation like you but i know financial expectations of relatives well. As a well-earning person in the family, all nieces and nephews as well as cousins expect me to give the biggest presents and fattest envelopes for birthdays and Christmas…
I like the fact that you did not decide not to buy the bicycle – it is really not the boy’s fault! A difficult decision to remain fully quiet though. Among friends there should of course be honesty but in that case I might have done the same – silently and gradually distance myself.
I was very disappointed to read this article…Sad but true people value material things than valuing the relationship. Some people are always there wanting to see what they can get of others in possession instead of valuing their friendship, their knowledge what they have to offer. First of all the boy asking for something from you was not a proper thing. May be i am wrong…but that is what my parents thought me. The only thing we were allowed to ask was for the Blessings.