Both amazement and dejection vied for attention on the woman’s face when she heard Kabir’s response to her query. Instead of solving her problem, Kabir asked her to come back after a week. Here was the master who helped everyone by solving their problems. Yet, when it came to her issue—and a trivial one at that—he seemed evasive. After all, she merely wanted Kabir’s assistance in getting rid of her young child’s obsession for jaggery. The child would eat jaggery whenever he could lay his hands on it, even stealing from the boxes she hid them in. The distraught woman felt that all Kabir could have done was instruct her child not to eat jaggery. A directive from a person with such gravitas would have worked, something that her rebukes couldn’t. As she retreated with dejection, she consoled herself by saying that perhaps great souls aren’t bothered with such trivialities.
Though a bit reluctant, the following week the woman dragged herself, along with the child, to meet Kabir. Instantly recognising her and recalling the problem she faced, Kabir invited the child to sit on his lap. He explained how excessive consumption of jaggery would be harmful for the child. Kabir told the child about possible stomach aches frequently troubling him. From the look on the child’s face, it was evident that Kabir’s message had reached home.
Though pleased with what Kabir told her child, the woman was still perplexed. Why did Kabir take a week for something he could have done earlier? Kabir grinned sheepishly upon being asked. Then he explained, ‘I wish I could. However, how could I ask him to give up a habit when I too was a similar habitual offender?’ When he saw a confused look on the woman’s face, Kabir added, ‘I too used to eat jaggery all the time. However, since last week, I’ve consciously stayed away from it. I couldn’t advise others without mending my own ways.’
In our lives, we must honestly accept that, in innumerable instances, we don’t follow what we preach. Remember what Shakespeare said in ‘The Merchant of Venice’: ‘It’s easy to give twenty advices, but hard to follow even one of them.’ The term ‘walk the talk’ is common in the modern-day parlance. That’s what Kabir’s actions and words do: complement each other. Therefore, before we advise others, we must remember to ask ourselves if we follow the same path.
