ensures

This is dedicated to everyone who are friendly (“Friendship Day”  is a redundant concept generally in my life anyway because I celebrate friendship and friends every day of the year and every year) I go as usual with a nice story which is topical. Incidentally my friends in the media, have found more important things on this day,

While at it, food for thought –  Should I look out for a friend or be friendly to people. A deep hard thought and I guess it is always better to be friendly rather than be a friend. A friend is always a deal, you do this, I return the favour by doing that. But being friendly doesnt involve a trade-off. More than that, having friends limits our capability (after all how many can you physically reach out) but you can be friendly to the world, even with a rank stranger anywhere in the world, cant we?  For me personally, I have a living example in the form of  His Holiness Pujya Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankar of Art of Living. The ultimate sense of belongingness that HE displays anywhere on this planet is a sight to behold. He “may not” be friend to everyone (in the context I mentioned earlier)  but is friendly with everyone indeed. Jai Gurudev from depth of my hearts.

Chew on this and let me have you views.

In the meanwhile, read a wonderful story that someone shared with me, lest we become the mountain missing to see a friend right under our nose.

Friendly-ly yours 
Suresh

Once upon a time there lived a mountain, which was so high that it might have been the very tallest mountain in the whole world – and so he had very few friends. Only the big fluffy clouds could reach all the way to the peak. But what fun it was to poke his pointed summit into their fluffy, snowy whiteness! How it tickled! The clouds would burst into laughter, and sometimes they would even laugh so hard they would cry, and then it would rain on the earth below.

One hot summer the sun shone down so relentlessly that for several days there wasn’t a single little cloud in the sky, and the mountain felt very sad. Finally, when he couldn’t bear being lonely any longer, he asked the great wide sky, “Why won’t you let the little ones run and play in your big bright blueness?”

The sky replied, “All my children have gone to the kingdom of winter, which is very far from here. They won’t come back until the end of summer.”

“But I miss them so much!” the mountain said with a sigh. “Maybe I should go to the winter kingdom too, and visit my friends?”

“You are a mountain, and mountains are heavy and can’t fly like the clouds. Mountains always stay in the same place,” the sky stated firmly.

From that day the mountain became even sadder. “Everyone else moves around and finds exciting new things and I have to sit still, nobody and nothing needs me,” he wailed. Tears began to flow down the mountain face as, for the first time in his life, the mountain cried. Even as he cried, the dried and cracked soil in the plain below heaved a sigh of relief and started to thirstily drink in the long-awaited water. Even before the end of the day the plain was covered with fresh green growth.

The plain called out to the mountain, “O, kind mountain! Thank you for saving me from a terrible fate! Your water is so pure it has healed all my wounds. Look at how much it has changed me!”

The mountain was so surprised that he stopped crying. Until then nobody had even spoken to him from down below. He was, after all, so very high, and the plain so far below, that the mountain had forgotten that it even existed. The mountain looked down and gasped in surprise as he saw the flourishing green carpet, shining and fresh. The plain was so beautiful that the mountain felt like kissing it, and tingled with delight at the thought. At that the wise old sky whispered to him, “Now, mountain, you see that you can find friends anywhere. You just have to notice them!”

The picture above is Shivanasamudra  – the Gaganachukki Falls near Mysore about 110 kms from Bangalore, in its resplendent best what with heavy rainfall in the area, it was a sight to behold.

True indeed is the nature’s ways to keep us happy. But then how long do we let it enthrall us with the beauty- not for long the way we are raping the nature 😦 It remains in pictures for our future generation. and a nice folk tale – Once upon a time…there existed…. but living happily ever after is a remote possibility. Long live Man’s Greed!!!