Iron Safe

The day started as usual with the cry of his wife. She was complaining that she had no good dresses to wear to office. There were only old ones and a few recent ones that were good. She said to him “I wish somebody suddenly gives me a sum of money and asks me to buy dresses for whole of them”.

Just this day was about dresses. Every day she finds a new topic to lament about. She needs a maid, she needs rest all the time, she wants to sleep longer in the mornings, she wants nice jewelry and so on… Prem was disturbed by her complaints and was worrying that he did not make her happy. He wanted to tell her that she is all what he had for happiness. And he wanted to make her happy by all means.

That day he went to office with heavily loaded thoughts of his wife’s grievances. She was his sole princess and he could not make her feel comfortable and joyful. Is it just her problem or are all the wives like that. Whoever you may be, your wife complains. He was retrospecting on the statement. He even thought why he had married her and repent for it all along.

His bank had an iron safe coming in that day, for the jewel loans. A furniture dealer had arranged for shipping it to the bank and placing it in. There were 4 men who came in for the work. For them, every day was a mystery. Getting a contract job for the day fetches them the day’s food. 4 of them were waiting outside the branch for the iron safe to arrive by a truck.

He came out to have a tea break. The 4 men were still waiting for the safe. One of them was sad and was narrating about the problem between him and his wife last night. He said, “She is such a monster you know, she keeps on asking for a dress. She says all her sarees are torn and she wants just one to wear decently when she goes to shop. She wants me to buy some books and pencils for the kids. Where does she think the money comes from. And on top of it, she wants some medicine for the younger child. He is sick it seems. I am really fed up of life. Why do women want more always.”

Standing with the tea in hand and hearing them, prem thought that “the iron safe guy could not see that all his wife wanted were the basic things to live. She did not demand luxurious things from him, and he calls her a monster. What would he feel if he had heard what my wife asks for?” Prem then finished his tea and went on to continue his day’s work.

The iron safe had arrived and the workers placed it inside the bank. They got the wage and left the place. Before leaving, Prem called the iron safe guy and asked him to come the next day, so that he would give him some old sarees of his wife and some used notebooks for his child. The guy was happy and managed to get medicine for his baby. The guy praised him in his heart saying that “he must have got a nice wife who is always satisfied with what she has, and donates to the needy people. How nice she must be.”

Then the guy, on the way to his home, saw a couple on the road. The lady was physically challenged and was fully dependent on her husband for everything. The man was a cobbler and was repairing some old sports shoes which were thrown by the joggers on the road. The cobbler’s wife asked him “I am so hungry, could you pls buy us some food”. That was it. He was on top of her, beating her and thrashing her with all the nasty slangs.

The iron safe guy thought “What did she ask him for. Just food. And that is the only thing we all live on. How would he react if his wife asked for saree, books and medicine like mine does?”. He then bought them some bun and tea from the nearby stall for the couple and left.

The Cobbler thought “This man must be having a good wife who does not demand for food, water, this and that. He is happy with her and that makes him help people like us. Why didn’t God give me such a life?”

What do these 3 men tell us?

Wife is just an analogy used in place of life and its problems. Everyone sees others’ problems as very simple and easy going and his problems as the most complex ones. He feels it is so easy to solve others’ problems than one’s own.

When one thinks of his unhappiness as the biggest, then he resides in his own small world, worrying about it. And he feels jealous about others, thinking that they have smaller problems. In fact, all have their own problems which are the biggest.

What I have understood from Life is “Everything happens for a Good cause” and let it happen to you. Life’s mystery is that “Every problem that entered into your life will have its exit by itself.”