When the President of India, Giani Zail Singh, went to the U.S.A. for an eye operation, he was admitted to the same Texas hospital where his predecessor, Neelam Sanjivva Reddy, had been previously treated. In Delhi, rumour had it that when Mr. Zail Singh was due to be taken to the operation theatre, the Chief Surgeon came to him and asked, “Are you ready?” Promptly came Giani Zail Singh’s reply, “No, I am not Reddy, I am Zail Singh?” (Hindustan Times, 4 December 1982).

This anecdote may well have been concocted, but the question remains, how was it that anyone could dare to make such a joke at the President’s expense? One very simple reason is that Mr. Zail Singh was not comfortable with the English language. This is common knowledge. But had Dr. Radha Krishnan or Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru been in his place, there would have been no attempts at such humours.

The outside world knows you as you have introduced yourself to it. It sends back its reflex responses according to the picture you have given it. This being so, when you find others mistreating you, do not seek the fault in them. Seek rather the fault within yourself. By recognizing your own shortcomings and doing your best to remove them, you can better safeguard yourself against the mistreatment of others.

A Greek artist is once said to have sculpted a statue of a man holding a bunch of grapes in such a realistic fashion that when he placed this statue at a crossroads, birds flew up to it and began to peck at the grapes. His friends congratulated him on having made the grapes appear so real that even the birds had been deluded. The artist was pleased with their felicitations, but he was not pleased with him­self. He said, “I have actually failed in carving the likeness of the man, otherwise the birds would never have dared to come near him.” The artist then made another attempt. The grapes were again so realistic that they attracted the birds. But this time they hovered at a distance from the statue, because the eyes of the man were so lifelike that they did not dare approach him.

Had the artist been content to bask in the praise of his friends, he would never have produced his ultimate masterpiece. It was the innate sense of his own shortcomings that spurred him on to absolute perfection.