A small anecdote on #humility inspired by @GunduHuDuGa.

Many
years ago, I was part of a team organizing classical music concerts in our university. An eminent Hindustani musician featured in our first concert. A couple of us went to receive the musician from the airport.
(1/n)

Due to sheer ill-luck, the musician had a missed flight and was hungry and slightly impatient. Though our team knew about it, there were no arrangements to alleviate the musician's impatience during the pick up as lunch was arranged in a host family.
(2/n)
A south Indian lunch might not have suited our artiste and he was miffed (we learnt about it only later). In any case, we saw that our artiste was not in the best of moods when the concert was about to begin. Artistes are notoriously temperamental - you know that.

(3/n)
It did not help that most of us in the team were south Indians. We were desperately trying to soothe his frayed tempers in the auditorium lobby and we weren't succeeding.
(4/n)
It was at that time that another team member - who was not with us in the morning - a trained tabla player - approached our artiste. From afar, he cast away his slippers, walked barefoot, slowly and humbly towards the artiste and touched his feet in reverence.
(5/n)
None of us had done this. After all, he was not our guru or elder. The artiste was not the guru of our tabla playing teammate either - but what he did made all the difference. The artiste's face now lit up.
(6/n)
He blessed our team member and taking a cue from him - we prostrated to him as well. We then had a good concert from our artiste who smiled throughout the evening.

(7/n)
It was not that the artiste sought our praNAms and obedience, but this expression of humility from our friend melted his cold anger. Humility can work wonders.

I still remember the change of expression in the artiste's face as my teammate touched his feet.

(8/n)
It is not without reason that this subhAShita is so famous.
विद्या ददाति विनयं "विनयाद्याति पात्रताम्" |
पात्रत्वाद् धनमाप्नोति धनाद्धर्मं ततः सुखम् ||

|| इति शम् ||
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