King Solomon & Me

On a marriage occasion of one of our cousin's in Surat ,there was our family reunion aunts and uncles, their kids, nearly same age cousins whom we hadn’t seen in ages met up there. It was gonna be a fun time.  Before all the marriage ceremonies we had leisure time to chit chat .We, all cousins sat around in a group , sharing our mundanes , doing most enjoyable stuff  “gossips” . Everybody knows its a bad thing to talk behind one's back but  no one in  these world  stayed away from enjoying the comfort of gossips, Gossips about our groom’s in-laws, his  sister in-law and her short dresses .We were talking about failings and disasters and we enjoyed taking pleasure in the misfortune of others.We all know it was wrong to gossip, but no one resisted to seem malicious and we all  indulged  in this guilty pleasure . Our appetite for gossip was insatiable, then after some time  we decided to share some secrets .Some of us were hesitated but some were feeling very inclined to share their own secrets. We were laughing like drain when each of us one after the other shared their secrets . And now  it was my brother’s turn .

" it can be called as a secret , or a true inspirational story", a story of Me,Renu and king Solomon “ he said in a serious note . I frowned ,We all looked at each other and grinned .

Since childhood renu was very fond of reading stories.She used to read all the stories from her English and Hindi text books within couple of hours, and after reading she would love to recite me all these stories with real expressions .She was two classes senior to me ,I always gained the knowledge of those stories before it actually comes into my own text book ,stayed one jump ahead  from rest of my classmates most of the times .I remember one of those stories which helped me in my real life ,Story of great king “Solomon “ it was something like this -

 “Two young women who lived in the same house and who both had an infant son came to Solomon for a judgment. One of the women claimed that the other, after accidentally “smothering her own son while sleeping, had exchanged the two children to make it appear that the living child was hers. The other woman denied this and so both women claimed to be the mother of  the living son and said that the dead boy belonged to the other.

After some deliberation, King Solomon called for a sword to be brought before him. He declared that there was only one fair solution: the live son must be split in two, each woman receiving half of the child. 

Upon hearing this terrible verdict, the boy's true mother cried out, "Oh Lord, give the baby to her, just don't kill him!" The liar, in her bitter jealousy, exclaimed, "It shall be neither mine nor yours—divide it!"

The king declared the first mother as the true mother, as a true, loving mother would rather surrender her baby to another than hurt him, and gave her the baby. King Solomon's judgment became known throughout all of Israel and was considered an example of profound wisdom. “

Few months after listening to this story something strangely similar incident happened to me .One day me and one of my friends started fighting. Our classmates gathered and were enjoying the heat of our quarrel .Our class teacher entered  the classroom as soon as period bell rung. He saw us fighting ,scolded us and told everyone to sit at there places and asked us the reason of fighting .

I told him that we are fighting for this car shaped pencil sharpener ,"sir this sharpener is mine but piyush grabbed it from me and claiming it to be his". Piyush interrupted “ No sir this sharpener belongs to me I bought it yesterday only , Vikas is telling a lie he stole the same from me and claiming to be his . Teacher was carefully listening to our argument, pondering, he didn’t say a word for sometime and then "There is only one solution  i will cut this sharpener into two equal parts and each of you will receive half of it ." He declared.  There was a pin drop silence in the class ,neither me nor piyush said anything . After a short pause I exclaimed "no sir I don’t want it to get cut into pieces it’s a very beautiful sharpener ,I don’t need it , please give this sharpener to piyush", one could have seen a huge triumphant grin,a look of self satisfaction on our teacher's face. He slapped and rebuked piyush for telling lies and gave that sharpener to me “

“Bravo” all of us clapped , "then you should have thanked renu for this "one of our cousins advised

Yes I must thank her ."Thank you Renu" , Just because of you I got something which was actually not mine .