Read Online Brotherhood Dharma, Destiny and the American Dream by Deepak Chopra, Sanjiv Chopra - Free Book Online
Authors: Deepak Chopra, Sanjiv Chopra
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography
Ads: Link
our minds open to the values of other people.
That was reinforced by my mother, of course, who lived her life believing that no one human being was better than another. She steadfastly refused to subscribe to the caste system. My mother simply had faith. There really isn’t any other way of describing her, although this story comes pretty close. In 1957 my parents were living in Jabalpur, and independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was coming to town to reopen a weapons factory that would now be building Mercedes-Benz trucks for the army.
Most Americans are aware of the contributions of Gandhi, who led a great revolution by practicing passive resistance, but in India Nehru was equally beloved. Together they had led India out of British servitude. Nehru was an extraordinarily charismatic man and a brilliant leader who carefully plotted the path that has led to modern India. India today is a result of his vision. For many in India, he was as much George Washington as he was Martin Luther King Jr.
Weeks before his arrival in Jabalpur, people began making preparations for a momentous greeting. My mother worried constantly about which sari she would wear for this occasion. My father couldn’t understand the fuss.
“What difference does it make?” he asked. “There will be millions of people in the streets. He’s not going to notice your sari.” But she insisted on buying a new sari anyway.
“He’s going to notice me,” she said. “He’s going to acknowledgeme.” Of course that wasn’t going to happen. Nehru didn’t know my mother. But she had faith it would happen.
Nehru’s parade route took him past our house on Narbada Road. At four thirty in the morning, we were all dressed up and standing in the street. My father was wearing his army uniform, all his medals shined. Deepak and I wore our school jackets and ties. And my mother was wearing her new sari. By 7:00 a.m., hundreds of thousands of people lined the road, and the police had erected barriers to hold them back. We waited a long time, but suddenly a small convoy came around the corner. The prime minister was standing in the back of a jeep, waving casually to everyone. The crowd was screaming, “Long live Nehru! Long live Nehru!”
As Nehru’s jeep came slowly down the street the roar grew deafening. The people all around us were screaming, shouting, reaching out to touch him; he continued waving. But as his jeep passed in front of us, Nehru suddenly took the rose he always wore from his lapel and tossed it almost directly in front of my mother. She picked it up and looked at my father.
“What did I tell you?”
We went back into the house and placed that rose in a vase and then took everything else out of that room. For three weeks people came to our house from all over the city just to see the rose that Mr. Nehru had given to Mrs. Chopra. At the end of that time, she threw a party and gave everyone in attendance a rose petal. For some people it became a family heirloom to be handed down from generation to generation.
But the part that stays with me is that my mother never doubted for an instant that the prime minister was going to acknowledge her. As irrational as it seemed, she had faith.
There was at least one situation in which her faith went a little too far. My mother was a cricket fan. In 1959 the powerful Australian team came to India to play a weak Indian team. International cricket matches were extremely important in India. The whole country would come to a grinding halt—people would skip work, children would stay home from school, the traffic would disappear from thestreets. Nobody gave India much of a chance to win this match. But in what is still known as the Miracle at Kanpur, an aging cricketer named Jasu Patel became a national legend by taking an extraordinary nine wickets out of ten. That would be like hitting four home runs—in one inning. My mother was sitting by the radio listening to the match on
That was reinforced by my mother, of course, who lived her life believing that no one human being was better than another. She steadfastly refused to subscribe to the caste system. My mother simply had faith. There really isn’t any other way of describing her, although this story comes pretty close. In 1957 my parents were living in Jabalpur, and independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was coming to town to reopen a weapons factory that would now be building Mercedes-Benz trucks for the army.
Most Americans are aware of the contributions of Gandhi, who led a great revolution by practicing passive resistance, but in India Nehru was equally beloved. Together they had led India out of British servitude. Nehru was an extraordinarily charismatic man and a brilliant leader who carefully plotted the path that has led to modern India. India today is a result of his vision. For many in India, he was as much George Washington as he was Martin Luther King Jr.
Weeks before his arrival in Jabalpur, people began making preparations for a momentous greeting. My mother worried constantly about which sari she would wear for this occasion. My father couldn’t understand the fuss.
“What difference does it make?” he asked. “There will be millions of people in the streets. He’s not going to notice your sari.” But she insisted on buying a new sari anyway.
“He’s going to notice me,” she said. “He’s going to acknowledgeme.” Of course that wasn’t going to happen. Nehru didn’t know my mother. But she had faith it would happen.
Nehru’s parade route took him past our house on Narbada Road. At four thirty in the morning, we were all dressed up and standing in the street. My father was wearing his army uniform, all his medals shined. Deepak and I wore our school jackets and ties. And my mother was wearing her new sari. By 7:00 a.m., hundreds of thousands of people lined the road, and the police had erected barriers to hold them back. We waited a long time, but suddenly a small convoy came around the corner. The prime minister was standing in the back of a jeep, waving casually to everyone. The crowd was screaming, “Long live Nehru! Long live Nehru!”
As Nehru’s jeep came slowly down the street the roar grew deafening. The people all around us were screaming, shouting, reaching out to touch him; he continued waving. But as his jeep passed in front of us, Nehru suddenly took the rose he always wore from his lapel and tossed it almost directly in front of my mother. She picked it up and looked at my father.
“What did I tell you?”
We went back into the house and placed that rose in a vase and then took everything else out of that room. For three weeks people came to our house from all over the city just to see the rose that Mr. Nehru had given to Mrs. Chopra. At the end of that time, she threw a party and gave everyone in attendance a rose petal. For some people it became a family heirloom to be handed down from generation to generation.
But the part that stays with me is that my mother never doubted for an instant that the prime minister was going to acknowledge her. As irrational as it seemed, she had faith.
There was at least one situation in which her faith went a little too far. My mother was a cricket fan. In 1959 the powerful Australian team came to India to play a weak Indian team. International cricket matches were extremely important in India. The whole country would come to a grinding halt—people would skip work, children would stay home from school, the traffic would disappear from thestreets. Nobody gave India much of a chance to win this match. But in what is still known as the Miracle at Kanpur, an aging cricketer named Jasu Patel became a national legend by taking an extraordinary nine wickets out of ten. That would be like hitting four home runs—in one inning. My mother was sitting by the radio listening to the match on
Similar Books
