Concept of TIME (Part-3)

In Part-2 of the article we realised that our consciousness gets aware of time because of the events that keep occurring around us. We saw, that events occur in succession, one after the other. Their sequence of occurrence creates the impression of time in our consciousness. Gap between the occurrence of two events is called 'DURATION of time'. We measure time(rather, duration of time!) with the help of events.
Some events are periodic- they repeat again and again. For example, a pendulum swings from one end to the other again and again. We measure a duration of time with the help of such periodic events. The bob of a pendulum does not remain at one point all the times. So its being observed at any particular, say left extreme position, is followed by its disappearence from there. Then again after complition of one full cycle of swing, the bob reappears there.

Human Behaviour

Helping someone does not always help us earn Goodwill

Normally we are taught that if we help some one selflessly we will earn lots of goodwill.And if we keep helping, we expect that our goodwill account will get compounded, with time and with each person helped, to become a large corpus, and then people will start loving us for our good and helping nature. We are therefore taught in India by our elders to help others selflessly. But things are not so straightforward in the actual society. Actually factors affecting society and human behaviour are so numerous, and so diverse and entangled with each other, that the dynamics of society can't we expressed as simply as Laws are expressed in Physics.

For quite a few year we know a good natured lady. I will not take her real name. Let us call her Rama Ji. Rama Ji has helped us sometimes in the past. We used to give our respect and lots of friendly affection to her in return. She has two grown-up sons. Let us call them Bunny and Gunny. Bunny is elder and Gunny is younger. They were never good in studies. Naturally they had to leave their studies when they could not pass 12th class exam after making a couple of un-successful attempts. Rama Ji used to be self employed in the past. Then she was earning good money and used to liberally splurge on her two sons. Her husband Kartar (name changed) is a father of strict type. He was always opposed to the vagabond ways of his two sons. But whenever he scolded his sons Rama Ji would fight with him to protect the two sons from his ire. Slowly a rift started to develop between the father and the mother-sons team. With time the rift widened to become an insurmountable valley.

The two sons grew up to become typical easy going carefree Delhi boys. They were like many Delhi boys of modern generation not focused on anything in life. So both these boys could not get any regular employment anywhere. Their father Kartar has a small and successful business of his own. He earns well. Initially he was willing to let the two sons join him. But their non serious attitude towards life did not allow the two boys to work with their father for long. Actually the father is of very sincere type who comes to work on time and would work the whole day without any tension. But the two sons wanted to enjoy the life. So sons stopped going to their father's shop after some days. Initially Kartar persuaded the two sons to join him and work sincerely. But sons refused on the pretext that father is too strict and misbehaves with them before the servants. Rama Ji, as always, gave her silent (and sometimes vocal too!) support to the boys. This made the equation between the father and the mother-sons team even more bitter. When both Bunny and Gunny could not get any employment anywhere their relationship with Kartar soured even more because Kartar began making sarcastic comments about his two sons openly. He would some times even abuse his sons and wife too. Things became so bad with time that Kartar stopped giving money to his wife. He stopped taking food in his home too. Rama Ji had stopped working many years back. So now without getting any financial support from her husband, sustenance became a real big problem to her.

When she was still earning, Rama Ji had helped us financially once or twice during our bad times in the past. Actually she is a good friend of my wife. Although Rama Ji is much elder in age than my wife, but still they both were able to forge friendship and their friendship has continued for many years. In our heart we were grateful towards Rama Ji. We also respected Rama Ji because she has mostly behaved well with us. Yes the two sons have occasionally behaved arrogantly with us because (I guess!) they used to think that we are maintaining friendly relationship with their mother in our own interest. Sometimes they used to indirectly make fun of us too. But we did not mind because we considered Rama Ji as a very good lady and so we pardoned everything that her sons would do un-conditionally.

When her husband stopped giving money to Rama Ji, obviously she asked the two sons to go out and earn. Bunny somehow found a small job somewhere. But Gunny could not get job. Slowly, God knows what kind of thoughts started cropping into Bunny's mind, he began to show attitude to his brother and mother. Perhaps he began to think that he is a better capable man than Gunny and that is why he got a job whereas Gunny could not. He would give very little money to his mom Rama Ji for meeting the household expenses. He would save the major part of his earnings in his bank account. So Rama Ji did not get much relief even after Sunny began to earn. Sunny used to make fun of Gunny on his inability to get a job. He would often say "it is not my duty to earn money for Gunny. Why should I only contribute money to meet expenses to run our house? Why not Gunny does something too?... etc. etc... ". But despite his best effort Gunny could not get any job. Actually he had no qualification, neither did he possess any knowledge of employable skill.
One day Rama Ji came to our house and started weeping at her fate. As I have written earlier, we respected her a lot. Naturally we became distressed when we saw her undergoing so much trouble, emotional pain and financial hardship. She was telling that if Gunny finds some job then all her problems will be automatically finished.

I am a self employed teacher. Many of my students belong to affluent families. So I began thinking in my mind to ask parents of some of my students to give Gunny some job. One good person, whose son is studying from me, agreed to give Gunny a job on my recommendation. And thankfully Gunny finally got a job with even higher salary than Sunny. When I had helped Gunny to get him a job, I had only done so because, I and my wife, really wanted to help Rama Ji. I never wanted her to feel indebted to me or my wife. We just wanted her to feel happy. For ourselves we just wanted to earn a little goodwill in their heart.

But humans are very complex creatures. Rama Ji's son joined his job. He started earning good money. Financial condition of her family improved. The two brothers are now again on friendly terms. Bunny is going to buy a new mobile phone for his mom Rama Ji. He now gives more money to her than before. Perhaps after seeing Gunny get a job he has realised that he(Gunny) is as good as him(Bunny).

But they have now began to avoid us. Some times they do not even pick our call when we call on their mobile. Once Bunny even misbehaved with us. Rama Ji too has began to get aloof from my wife. God knows why?

So instead of earning any good will we have lost a family friend.

Now I am always wondering: Is helping someone good?!