I am writing about #MyRoleModel as a part of the activity by Gillette India in association with BlogAdda.com.
This blog post is dedicated to a very kind human being whom i met and interacted for a very short time.
Very recently I had gone to Kerala and we had advanced bookings for car and hotel. We were supposed to be picked up from the railway station and the same care was supposed to take us all the places in Kerala.
We were very tired after the train journey, and to our bad luck, the car had not come. We were calling all places to find out where the driver was and when we called him we realized that the driver was waiting at some other station for us. We took it for granted that he was lying and was probably picking someone else up. The station was a small one, so there was no proper place to even sit. We were very annoyed and after a long wait of 2 hours he finally came. My dad was waiting to scold him, but as soon as he came, he smiled. And his smile was so genuine and his sorry was so heartfelt , that our anger just dropped and we could hardly say anything apart from “its ok”. Later my dad got a call from the authorities who told us that they had sent the driver to the wrong station.
Unlike most of the drivers who are very rash and frustrated about driving , he seemed to enjoy it and was very soft spoken. He had a very strong Malayalam accent in his voice, so it was a little difficult for us to make out what he said, but no matter what he said, he would always smile.
He was financially not very well off at all, he told us he had been to gulf and was planning to go there again till his 4 year old daughter told him, “daddy you would anyway be driving the car there why not drive it here and stay with us.” This made me feel why so many of us migrate, when they can stay here with their family and be much happier. I always used to fight with the cabbies in my office and tell them to drive properly, but this journey made me think otherwise. For most of the time we were travelling and when sitting in an AC car doing nothing can be so tiring, how difficult it is for someone to drive continuously. It is important we try and understand someone’s trouble in life and behave with them keeping in mind all of that.
He would take us on roads, where the view can be good, so that though we see less places we still would cover as much as possible. He skipped all places in Itinery which were not worth seeing and showed us better places. He seemed to be a very loving family man, and he told us that wherever he went around Kerala, he would get something back for his children, because he could not afford to show them these places. Happiness is about small things.
We would always take him for lunch and dinner wherever we went , and he was so touched by all of it, that he narrated to us incidents of how other passengers would not even think about the driver and not even offer him a chai(tea).
I have learnt now that no matter what you do, however big or small your job is, it is essesntial that you do it with utmost sincerity and perfection. One should have patience and perserverance in life. One should be content. He would never be late. He would never ask for any tip or chai paani. He was a man with a lot of self respect. All in all , he made our trip a memorable one. While leaving my father offered him money and told him to buy something for his kids, his eyes gleamed and i could see he was very grateful to us though we hardly had done anything for him.
PS: His name is Sameer, and he is a good man. 🙂
On a long journey with Calvin and Hobbes 