Read Online Brotherhood Dharma, Destiny and the American Dream by Deepak Chopra, Sanjiv Chopra - Free Book Online Page A

All India Radio. She happened to be wearing a favorite sari that day, as did many sports fans, because she was convinced that what she was wearing was good luck. So for the next forty years, every time India played an international cricket match she wore that sari. The fact that India lost the majority of those matches didn’t bother her. When Deepak and I teased her about it, she was unperturbed.
    “Say what you want. I’m still going to wear that sari.” And so she did. Even the dry cleaner would know when an international cricket match was in the offing.
    Our mother demonstrated her compassion every day with the patients who came to my father’s medical office in our home. She would greet them at the door herself.
    “How did you come?” she would ask.
    The answers ranged from chauffeured car to a walk of many miles: “We heard of Dr. Chopra in our village. We came by bus so he can make the diagnosis.”
    Sometimes, rather than charging them anything she would give them twenty rupees for their return fare.
    The story that best exemplifies the values that I was taught by my mother actually took place after Deepak and I had left home to become doctors ourselves. But her actions in this situation were no different than they had been at any time while we were growing up. Our parents were living in a house they had built in an area of Delhi called Defence Colony. About nine o’clock in the evening, their cook, Shanti, was placing food on the table when the doorbell rang. That wasn’t at all unusual in and of itself—patients often came by the house at night.
    Shanti went to answer the door, and a minute later my parents heard unusual sounds. Suddenly three young men pushed Shantiinto the dining room, covered in blood from a cut on his head. All three of the intruders had knives, and one of them also had a gun. They started screaming at my parents, making all kinds of threats. My mother stood up to them.
    “I know what you want,” she said. “Money and jewelry. We’ll give you whatever we have in the house. Your need seems to be greater than ours. Here you are.” She took off the jewelry she was wearing and handed it to them.
    “That’s not enough,” the leader yelled. He demanded the keys to the safe and forced them into the bedroom.
    My mother handed him the keys and began helping him open it, when she realized one of the robbers was still beating Shanti. That was when she finally got angry.
    “Stop that!” she screamed at him. “He has two young children. If you want to kill someone, kill my husband and me. We’ve had a good life and our children are well settled. But don’t you dare beat this young man. He’s done nothing to you and we’re giving you what you want.”
    The thieves looked at one another, unsure what to do. They stopped beating Shanti. Suddenly the leader tossed the earrings my mother had given him onto the bed, then bent down and touched my mother’s feet, a gesture of great respect for older people and a way of asking for their blessing.
    “I forgive you,” my mother said, “and I hope you mend your ways.”
    “You have been very kind,” he said. “It doesn’t seem right for us to take everything. Your face looks bare without your earrings.” He turned to the other thieves. “And I recognize this man. He’s the doctor who treated my father seven years ago. Let’s go.”
    They tied up my parents and Shanti and locked them in a bathroom. Before leaving, however, the leader of the gang warned them not to identify them to the police, threatening to come back to harm them if they did. My mother gave him her word she would not.
    My mother, who was then in her fifties, untied my father’s ropes with her teeth and then called the police. The robbers were clumsy and left several clues, including their fingerprints, and were quicklyarrested. But when my mother was told that to recover her jewelry she would have to pick the robbers out of a lineup, she refused, explaining that she