If you don’t ask, you’ll never get it. Despite agreeing wholeheartedly with this philosophy, I hardly ever embraced it. Maybe I was born diffident, or perhaps it was a side effect of being raised up on hard-core working class values such as ‘What you get, or don’t get in life, is as per your KQ (Karma Quotient).’ So I watched. Not so happily. As things that matter in life - promotions, plum assignments, the extra aloo paratha with a generous dollop of melting butter balancing precariously on it - sneered and waltzed past me. All because I desired but didn’t ask for them.
And then the penny dropped. Thanks to a pan-chewing gentleman that passed off as the entire accounts department in a production house that was famous for outwitting its employees out of raises (We are helping you build your careers, and you want money for it? Go and do another 16-hour shift. And remember to flush only after three of you use the loo. Water is precious.)
Mr. Paanwala snorted as he observed my dismay at the promised raise that magically disappeared from the pay cheque. ‘You are digging a well on top of a hill. And you expect water to gush out. Hah! You should first look for the source of water and then dig a well next to it.’ It was deep, vague and would have made absolute sense being uttered by a skinny Mastah in a badly-dubbed Kung-Fu flick. But it did strike a chord. Years later though. When I took up photography, I made a promise to myself. Never shy away from asking someone’s permission to take a photo. Once a moment is gone, it’s gone forever. I hesitated just for a moment before asking the sadhu featured here whether I can take his photo. The hesitation was not because of anything else but for the fact that he looked rather stern and I didn’t want his third eye to open up and grill me into a human version of a KFC bucket meal. I love photography; but there are limits. Anyway despite the constant strict look, the sadhu gently nodded his head and allowed me to take not one or two, but several photographs.
If you don’t ask, you’ll never get it. Now only if I can apply this philosophy to some other aspects of life.