I once happened to meet a gentleman who had neither a proper education nor a sound economic position. His greatest asset as he saw it, was the fact that his grandfather, who lived in a palatial house, had been one of the Nawab’s close associates and had had an honourable title bestowed upon him. He went on at some length, and with great pride, about his grandfather’s exalted state.
Mr. G.D. Birla (1894-1983), besides being one of the topmost industrialist in India, was also a very close associate of Mahatma Gandhi in the freedom struggle.
On the insertion of a one-rupee coin, an automatic weighing machine at the airport ejects a neatly printed card showing one’s weight.
Fascinated by this machine, a little boy stood on its footplate, reached up and dropped a one-rupee coin into the appropriate slot. The machine made a rattling noise, then the card, with the child’s weight printed on it, came out of another slot.
Ernest Psiachari (1883-1914), a French writer, was in his youth a freethinker and an atheist. But later he reverted to Christianity. Grandson of the famous historian, Ernest Rinan, Psiachari is ranked among those who made an effort to bring about a spiritual awakening in France at the turn of the twentieth century. One of his sayings has been rendered in English in these words:
Silence is a bit of heaven that comes down to earth.
