Personal Service

By Bhagat Puran Singh Ji

Every man and woman should spend some of his time and energy in the service of others. This is a debt that we carry for enjoying the comforts and privileges that the God has so kindly given us. It should be cleared by serving those brothers and sisters who have been deprived of comforts and privileges by individuals, nature or the society. Donating money alone is not adequate. You should devote your thoughts, your time and actions for them. Manual service is a first step towards a virtuous life. It teaches you how to be magnanimous. Selfless service is the base of a religion.

Wherever you live perhaps you can find a person who is miserable and needs your help. Alas! Such persons can be found everywhere. We have no excuse for not helping them. Personal service is the duty of everyone and everyone can avail of the opportunities to carry out this duty.

Faulty customs and laws should not become obstacles while carrying our personal service. Personal service when carried out sincerely crosses all artificial demarcations of cast, nationality and nationality. This communication leads a person straight from his heart to another awaiting heart. Personal service will develop peace, prosperity and openness between different casts, races and nationalities.

Wherever there is sorrow and pain there is an open invitation for Personal Service. This service has double benefits firstly, for the service rendered and secondly for the person for whom the service is being carried out. Personal service is not required to wait for any laws, institutions and legislations. It is completely free to fly on the wings of compassion to reach directly to the needy person. It never has to follow the devious and conniving paths of the Politics and Law. It emerges with freshness and vigour from the kind hearts of the generous and selfless people. It is not the result of long drawn out discussions, or arrives in a stale and decayed form after travelling the uninspired, narrow minded, gloomy and lazy paths.

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Seva is not deterred by the personal secrets and differences of the individuals. It comes dashing in the help of the tormented souls of old or young men, women and children. It does not discriminate between countries, religions or castes; its only concern is the human being. It follows only one relationship of humanity, only one aim, that is of Love, Listens to only one sound, that of pain and suffering.

As the pain and suffering is spread wide over and the Personal services are extremely limited. Their results are also constrained in a small area. This problem can be solved only on forming progressive Political and Economic Institutions. I cannot dare say that even such an arrangement of personal service would alleviate the pain and misery from this world. Although the scope of Political and economic organizations is quite wide, it has its own limitations.

Personal Service concentrates on the present; in fact it presents solutions to the problems that surface at the present hour and the minute. Whereas the political and Economic policies aim at the coming years, centuries and the ages. Personal service is immediate and every one can do it. On the other hand political and economic organizations have the long term plans where you got to wait till the time you get fed up and start asking how much time more!

When you pass by a destitute cripple you can help him by giving him some money for his food. But by the time your progressive party will set up a home and a hospital for the

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cripples, this destitute perhaps won't be alive. The only answer to political excuses is Personal service.

If there is any story of my service worth telling it is that of the old man with the heavily infected leg. His leg was infested with maggots. The hole where the maggots form is extremely small and cannot be easily seen. This hole needs to be covered with a mixture of Turpentine oil and Chloroform. I took the old man to the Dispensary of Shambu Nath's factory. Dr Dwarka Nath gave the mixture in a small bottle. The maggots come out from the smell of that mixture. When I applied the mixture to old man's leg, the maggots started coming out very fast. But after some time their coming out became very slow. I took out all the maggots with tweezers. As the hole is very small the maggot takes a lot of time to come out. On the first day I took about three hours to take out the maggots.

I have done all these tasks as that of a mother for her son. My mother had stilled in my heart the fact that God is the creator of this world. Everything moves under his control. If anyone can visualise God in every creature and serve him with full devotion, tries to minimise their miseries and makes them comfortable to the best of his ability, God provides him with all the gifts of life. He can achieve the highest standards in life.

God deliberately has not given me any relative so that I should consider the whole world as my relatives and achieve greatest happiness by giving them my love. A man living away from the pain and miseries of the world dies a sad death because God resides in the man. Today at the age of eighty years I cannot find greater happiness than what I have already achieved. I cannot contain myself with happiness. I receive donations through cheques from 21 countries. I have completed all my studies sitting on the road side which have surprised many college professors. I think that God provides His devotees with the keys to his door. Some lady from England would come and tell me that she keeps waiting anxiously for my monthly magazine 'Jeevan Lehar'. She cannot find peace without reading this magazine and she considers my readings as the spiritual guidance of her life.

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Initially when I went to Guru Nanak Mohalla asking for food, the ladies there complained that I was making it a habit to come and ask for food everyday. But slowly everyone came to know that I was looking after the abandoned and the cripples. Thereafter I used to get food regularly from some of the houses which were about half a mile away. When I used to go for procuring food I used to leave my beloved Cripple either with a shopkeeper or with a Sikh couple who were managing a hearth for scorching corn. This hearth is still running in 1984, the man has died but the old woman is still alive. The cripple used to sit on his knees. The bare knees can be injured by any pebble from the earth. In case of any sudden noise, the Cripple used to get scared and fall forward on his face. God was very kind he always provided help in the form of the shopkeeper or the Sikh couple who would willingly look after the Cripple for a couple of hours.

The Cripple has been the greatest asset of my life. If I had not met him I would not have done anything in the shape of Pingalwara and earned the love and respect of this world. I have spent 80 years of my life with the tenderness and purity of a child's heart. Four months I had spent on the road side passed with the blessings of God, without much problem because I was young and my body was strong.

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