Dear Friends,
I have great pleasure in introducing Ratna to you. She and I were colleagues a few years ago. I have learned a lot from Ratna and probably that is why I am now able to run this big business. It is from Ratna I learned what a “horegallu” really means. A horegallu is a stone bench. It helps tired persons to sit down and rest for some time so that they can regain their energy. Ratna was a horegallu in the sense she helped tired and miserable people to regain their energy, patiently listening to their problems. Every day during lunch hour, she would sit with some person in one of the rooms, chatting with him/her.
I often wondered what they talked about. One day I asked her and Ratna told me that they shared their troubles with her. I then asked Ratna how she could help in solving their problems. Did she have an answer for them? She told me she only listened to them. I was young then and I wondered how merely by listening to somebody’s problem, it gets solved. She then told me she was not a’trained counsellor or an intellectual. Nobody can solve your problem. You have to solve it yourself.
Ratna explained things to me further. God has given her two ears to listen. She hears people with sympathy and no judgment. When somebody talks about his worries, it relieves him a lot. Ratna never revealed to others what people told her. This way Ratna helped people to be relieved and to go on with their journey of life. This way she was serving people in her own way.
I thank Ratna for what she did to all and to me.
Let us take a leaf from Ratna and become horegallus in our own way.
