An eighty-year-old man was sitting on the sofa in his house along with his forty-five-year-old highly educated son. Suddenly a crow perched on their window.

The father asked his son, "What is this?" The son replied, "It is a crow". After a few minutes, the father asked his son a second time, "What is this?" The son said, "Father, I have just now told you, it's a crow." After a little while, the old father again asked his son the third time, "What is this?" This time, a hint of irritation was heard in the son's tone when he said to his father with a rebuff, "It's a crow, father, a crow!"

A little afterwards, the father again asked his son for the fourth time, "What is this?"

This time the son shouted at his father, "Why do you keep asking me the same question again and again, although I have told you so many times IT'S A CROW! Why can't you understand this?"

A little later the father went to his room and came back with an old tattered diary, which he had maintained since his son was born. On opening it, he asked his son to read that page. The son read the following words written in the diary:

"Today my little son aged three was sitting with me on the sofa when a crow perched on the window. He asked me twenty-three times what it was, and I replied to him all twenty-three times that it was a crow. I hugged him lovingly each time he asked me the same question over and over twenty-three times! I did not at all feel irritated. Rather, I felt affection for my innocent child."

While the little child asked him twenty-three times, "What is this," his father felt no impatience in replying to the same question again and again, but this day, when the father asked his son the same question only four times, the son became irritated and ill-tempered. So, if your parents attain old age, do not repulse them or look at them as a burden, but speak to them graciously. Be cool, obedient, humble and kind to them, as they were to you when you were a child. Be considerate to your parents. From today onward, say this aloud: "I want to see my parents happy forever. They have cared for me ever since I was a baby. They have showered their selfless love on me. They sacrificed, crossing mountains and valleys, bearing storms and strife to make me a person presentable in society."

Say a prayer to God: "I will serve my old parents in the best way. I will always speak kindly and courteously to my dear parents, no matter how they behave.”

Illustrations: Vamsi Aditya, SSSIHL

- Heart2Heart Team