Yesterday I was watching a movie name Yes Man, starring Jim Carrey and Zooey Deschanel. The theme of the story is, if you develop a habit of saying No to everything, you are basically closing the doors of opportunities, but if you can change it to telling Yes, you will be embracing the new unexpected possibilities and you will be surprised to see how your life will change dramatically. At the time of watching, I remember a small story, I heard some time back in Bombay.
In Bombay I met a person, he was husband of a paratuto didi of me. They invited me at their apartment in New Bombay. I liked the positive attitude of that gentleman very much, we were discussing about different topics and naturally it came up Bengali’s are doing good every where outside but why Bengal is not progressing? There is a proverb : Banya ra bone sundar aar bangali sundar prabase. ( Wilds are beautiful in woods and Bengalis outside of Bengal ) .
Somehow in Bengal, we have developed tremendous negative attitude of telling No to everything. Bring up any idea over there, there will be thousand opinions to explain you, how it will fail and discourage you in all possible direction. He was telling that is the reason Bengal is not being able to make progress and I completely agreed with him. When you are so negative from the thought process itself, how it can reflect positive result in your action. That is what we are finding all around of Bengal.
Then he told a story from his life, one day he was travelling from Dunlop to Bali halt crossing Belur bridge by auto rickshaw. When you are travelling through this you will see the Dakshineshwar Kali mandir at right. When he reached destination he offered a 10 Rs. bill and auto rickshaw suppose to return a 5 Rs. coin. Autowala said I don’t have change, give me the exact fare. Then he checked his pocket and found no change and asked the autowala again, can you please check your bag. Then Autowala told rudely I told you already I don’t have.
After that, surprising the Autowala, he said again with a smile, just put your hand inside the bag, I am telling there is a 5 Rs. coin. I don’t why, may be because of the virtue of the place, in spite of bursting into anger, Autowala slides his hand inside the bag and a coin came out. The Autowala got stunned!
The story is very simple but the message is very powerful, we developed a habit of telling No even when we have just enough to say Yes. This habit of denying penetrated so deep in our Bengali culture, which is blocking every little developmental initiative.
If you like the articles, please forward the website link to your other friends, if few more people read and likes it, my effort of writing will get some meaning.
Please don't forget to send your feedback to : partho.mridha@gmail.com