It was the month of July, 2009. I was pursuing my Industrial Training from Chandigarh. I used to live in sector 40. The training schedule was from 10am to 2pm.
It was my last week there. Days were very big, hot and tiring. I wake up early in the morning. I got ready to go at 9:00am. I had to go sector 17 which was almost 5k.m. from there. I used to go there by rickshaw or by bus. The temperature outside was rising. I went outside and started looking for the rickshaw as usual. But there was no rickshaw, so I was thinking about bus.
And also about saving money as bus costs only Rs.5.00. I took the bus which came after 15 minutes. It was the first bus to the sector 17 in the morning. So was overcrowded. I could hardly find a place to stand in the bus.
The bus conductor was sitting on a seat, next to the middle door of the bus. And I was in the back corner of the bus. The bus seemed to be overloaded. I picked Rs. 10 from my pocket and thought about the ticket. But as the conductor was a crowd away from me I started to move towards the conductor.
As I reached the conductor, I saw that he was having an altercation with one of the passenger, because the passenger was not having the change of Rs.50. And the conductor was not accepting his money.
I just stopped and wanted to know that the conductor will accept Rs.10 or not. I was thinking so and as I looked outside, I saw that I was about to reach the station.
I realized that I have no ticket till now. And my inner voice started saying that I am doing wrong, I should take the ticket first. But I got a second thought that what does it matters, who will ask after arriving the station. It was the time I consciously chose wrong.
After a few minutes, suddenly the bus stopped, and ticket checker came inside. I was shocked and confused thinking that I have no ticket. I was looking at the ticket checker and he came to me, and asked for the ticket. I was stunned for a second. He again asked for the ticket and I showed him ten rupees note, which was in my hands. By saying nothing he charged me a challan of Rs.50. And by accepting my mistake I paid the challan of Rs.50 (10 times of normal ticket).
This instance left a deep impression on my mind. I realized that we should never compromise with the inner voice. Whatever we are doing in life, or inner voice is always there, saying yes or no. It is me who has to take a pause in the situation and realize my inner voice, because it is always right. But again if you have grown up doing something wrong or you have already ignored the inner voice several times, it will keep quite when you will be doing same thing again.
Though incidence was very small but as a teen, I got a lifelong lesson and I never ignored my inner voice.
wow man ....that takes some courage to publish such a post.It is honest and a very true post..infact its brilliant as it connects with the reader instantly..All of us face these situations time and again...you may have got away with that 10 rs ticket but that wouldn't have made you a better person....sometimes success is masked as failure..you failed to save 10 rs but you succeded in finding your inner voice.very true..simple and profound post....
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