Helping out others - sometimes comes at a price!!

I am a staunch believer in helping others. The reason is you get back more than what you give. It continues to happen to me all the time and I am sure it happens to all of us. We get help from unexpected quarters in our day to day life. Sometimes we acknowledge. Many a time we disregard – as if it was our birth-right to get that help. The commoner helps without expecting anything in return. The cycle of helping is happening all the time and keeps the circle of life moving.

Having talked in favor of helping others, I’d like to state that there are occasions when such helping extracts a price. It’s interesting. The most common example is that you try to help an accident victim and then get yourself embroiled in the police and legal complications. Let me share a couple of incidents which put me in the receiving end subsequently.
It was a November evening on Delhi’s Zakir Hussain Marg. The day was Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s birthday. Thousands of Sardars were going in a procession. I was driving my New Maruti car from the India Gate side with two of my colleagues. Traffic was at a very slow pace when suddenly I saw in front a lady with a small kid finding it difficult to start her Maruti. I asked the two colleagues to push the car to get it started. After a couple of pushes, I could sense that her car’s battery was gone and it would require some additional driving skill to keep the engine running in that slow traffic. Now look at my magnanimity. I ran to her- asked her to drive my car while I took to her steering wheel. With her kid in my car, I used all my driving skills to keep the engine running in that crowd. Once or twice it got stalled, but my friends pushed it to enable me to re-start. Just imagine the scene – the lady, a total stranger driving my new car while I was driving her khatara. Painstakingly we drove thru the crowd and finally got on to the ITO bridge. Near Swasthya Vihar we re-exchanged our cars and went our respective ways. She ofcourse invited us to coffee at her place. We declined and went ahead – very satisfied that we had helped a damsel in distress. I am sure the Man above had noted down this piece of going out of the way to help others. I was sure that I had collected some brownie points from HIM.
Brownies or not, the real result of that evening’s adventure was felt a couple of days later when I found it difficult to drive the car. Even before visiting the mechanic I knew the clutch plate was gone. Then it dawned upon me that the lady that evening must have used the clutch to control the new car in that heavy traffic. She must have used half clutch continuously to control the speed and in the bargain the clutch plate was gone. I laughed and told myself - 'Wow Hari. Thanks to your magnanimity. Please cough up 2500 and get the clutch plates replaced'. See the price I paid for going out of the way. What would have happened if I had not helped her? Something would have happened – isn’t it? Someone else would have helped.
On another occasion after having helped the owner of a car restart his engine, I got hit by a stone ricocheting off the front tyres.
Have I grown wiser? In matters of cars may be – but not in matters of helping. Keep helping others in small ways. It will come back to you in a bigger way. Some day I’ll share the stories of help I have got from total strangers. They have created a deep impact on me.