Your virtues serve you but as enemies

I had already finished a few handcrafted New Year cards, and was working on still more. This was my passion when I was a student in the 1970s.

I had already finished a few handcrafted New Year cards, and was working on still more. This was my passion when I was a student in the 1970s. For thrift and more than that, the desire to impart a personal touch, I always chose self-created greeting cards for important occasions. The activity involved cutting black album paper into handy card sizes, folding it, pasting white paper of shorter size inside, writing inspirational quotes in different colours on white paper and finally putting it inside handmade envelopes for posting.

The message on each card was recipient specific. The borders of each card were trimmed with zigzag-edged scissors for aesthetic reasons. It required care and time to prepare each card but the gratification derived at the end well compensated the efforts.

Once, my elder sister called on me. Overwhelmed by the design and distinct messages in my creations, she picked all my finished cards without asking me, and exchanged those for printed cards she had bought. Unwilling to use the glossy market stuff, I had to suffer the penalty of good work done by redoing seven additional cards. “The reward of doing well is the doing of it,” I recalled.

In our world, virtues are more likely to be exploited than appreciated. Attributes like a good handwriting, a difficulty saying no, doling out loans, or liberally offering help and services render one a soft target. “To some kind of men, their graces (virtues) serve them but as enemies,” said Adam in Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

In one organisation I served, the director at lunch hour would tell me: “Mr Barthwal, if you haven’t taken your lunch, please have it first. In fact I want a list of documents we published with the ministry’s funding in the two previous fiscals. It need not be typewritten, your handwriting is so fine! I have to convey this information to the ministry immediately.”

Years later when I was in Kolkata, two of my friends who were  transferred were separately looking for a truck to shift their personal belongings. As it would be cheaper, I suggested and got a single eight-tonner for both. Payment sharing could be 50-50 because the larger distance of one party would make up for the heavier load of the other.

The onus of listing the items in triplicate and physically handling the delicate items at both the picking points fell on me. After the job was done, the lady of one of the friends criticised me for favouring the other party!An act of philanthropy performed irrespective of appreciation or criticism has a pleasure known only to its practitioners.

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