"There can be no greater gift than that of giving one's time and energy to helping others without expecting anything in return," is indeed a great quote celebrating a wonderful capacity. Such generosities, extremely rare, need to be celebrated. This urgent need of honouring benevolence is a clarion call by whom? Any guesses? Gandhiji! Yes, you are almost there, almost right coz a follower of Gandhiji's was the man who wrote it.
Okay, let us not waste time and energy going about guessing the father of this quote! It was Nelson Mandela who thus made the world understand the unstated, silent strength of generosity beyond the need for reciprocity.
Quite possible it is to argue that his entire anti-apartheid movement was a rejection of a give-n-take of responses, bounties, goodies because a 'return gift' approach to relationships creates mo(ve)ments of imbalances wherein the weaker, the less powerful, the marginalised, like the black in the white obsessed South Africa, are always at the receiving end.
This apostle of an equal freedom rejected such systemic inadequacy by spending sixty-seven years of career fighting racial injustices, more than thirty of these from his prison cell. Hence the real tribute to him is not the very many first's in his illustrious career, the first black lawyer in, the first black president of South Africa, the black Nobel Prize winner, and so on.
The genuine pledge to his memory is the 'sixty seven' mission whereby one pays respects to this exponent of democracy and liberalism in the face of oppressive apartheid by spending sixty Seven minutes per day doing some concrete good to the the causes he espoused.
The genuine celebration of his birth anniversary on July 18 is a re-dedication to all the values he espoused. Thus would the ideals he fought for be realised, slowly but surely, thereby making the world more humane.
Long live, Madiba, which is an honorific title of respect, deriving from his native Xhosa clan word signifying all that he stood for during, and beyond, his eventful career.
Pratima@"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others," writes Mandela. Touche!
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