”May I help you?”...Help is always around the corner.

To make a mistake is the best way to learn; but repeating the same mistake again and again indicates carelessness or, perhaps, even foolishness. What if you made the same mistake, but under different circumstances? No matter how smart we are, we may be pulled into a crisis without notice. The only way out, then, is to ask people around you for help.

And the good news is there’ll always be someone or the other to bail you out of trouble. All you’ve to do is to ask. Most often, people hesitate in helping thinking they’ll land up in greater trouble or perhaps doubting the genuinity of the person or the situation. Once you explain your problem, stating the true facts, they’ll be more than willing to help. Thinking from the giving side, wouldn’t we do the same?

Last time I traveled by train, I was fined heavily for traveling on someone else’s ticket. At that moment, I had no other option but to call up my friends and ask for help. Luckily there was someone to rescue me. One of the lessons I learnt from that mistake was to carry more money while traveling. So, next time, I made sure I carried a minimum of 500 rupees in my wallet instead of the prior 100 rupees.

 

Now the same mistake occurred to me but in a slightly different manner. I wrongly read the PNR status of my train ticket as confirmed, when it was still only in the waiting list. Since I was pretty sure that the ticket was a confirmed one, I even cancelled the tickets booked for the subsequent train. Only after boarding the train did I come to know of it. Now, I was in trouble, because an E-ticket in the waiting list is more or less equivalent to ticket less traveling.

The TTR demanded that I remit double the ticket charge as fine. Thanks to the mistake I made earlier, I had carried a sum of 600 rupees – but this time, even that wasn’t adequate. I had no other option but to, once again, ask for help. I went around explaining my situation to at least 10 people, before a Tamilian offered to spare 500 rupees.

Quickly I remembered the law of numbers. You try to sell a product to 10 people – 5 will reject you right away, 3 will postpone their buying and 2 will help you close the sales. The point is how many sets of 10 people you see.

People are always willing to help us, just like we are ready to lend a helping hand to the needy. The problem is, only few people actually ask for help, fearing they’ll be let down. The Tamilian I met was ready to spare 500 rupees to a person; he had never met before, on the surety that I would transfer the money, online to his account, which was not at all a strong one.

The twist in the tale came when I told the TTR, all that had happened. He was willing to be slightly lenient, and charged me, only the fare from Thrissur to Chennai which totaled to a sum of 570 rupees thus, helping me to return the borrowed money.

It has been rightly said that, “Man is a social animal”. We are more or less obliged to our society and to our community. Our relation with them is a symbiotic one. It is ideal to have an attitude of “May I Help You?” always and it’s most certain that your help will be returned, when you’re in dire need of it, in some other manner, from some other source.

”Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” – Matthew 7:7 niv