The Passport Officer!

“You will be blissful the moment you give up ego and attachment.” (Bhagwan Baba)

In a queue outside the passport office, a man and his friend reached the client window, and the passport officer said brusquely, “Time up. Come tomorrow.” The man’s friend, called out, “Hey! Hello! My friend.” The man said, “Forget it, he will not listen, did you not see the look of contemptuous finality on his face?”

The friend said, “This is shameful … anyways you wait under the tree there. Let me try.” The friend found the passport officer having a cup of tea in the cafeteria and sat on the chair opposite him. The Passport Officer raised his eyebrows questioningly. The friend smiled. The Passport Officer was unnerved, “What do you want?” he mumbled. “Nothing, I just came in for a cup of tea. I found you sitting alone, so I thought I could sit with you.” “Hmm, that’s because nobody likes me here. So I always sit alone,” he said tersely. He picked up a biscuit from the officer’s plate. “Have you ever thought why no-one likes you here?”

“It doesn’t matter. Anyways no one likes me anywhere. My life is such. My wife left me and she even took my children with her.” “So, did you try to find out why she left you?” The officer looked at him, sometimes with uncertainty and sometimes with hatred, as the friend continued to munch on his biscuits.

Finally the friend said, “Look around, everyone in the cafeteria is sitting with someone or the other. Look at yourself, why are you left alone? Let me tell you. You snap at everyone who crosses your path. You are ready to bite and bark at anyone who comes close to you. A few minutes back, you banged the window shut in the face of the last man in the queue. Did you see his face? He had been standing in the queue for five hours. It would have taken you just another five minutes. And you told him to come tomorrow! Can you imagine how he would have felt? My friend, life is not just about making money. It’s about making friends too. I too came here only to help a friend.”

The officer rolled up his eyeballs and said, “Too late now. The fellow would have gone away.” “No, he is sitting under the tree outside. Should I call him? Will you stamp his papers?” With much difficulty, the Passport officer swallowed his pride and said, “Yes.”

Ten years later. The friend got a call from a man who said, “Sir, I am the Passport Officer.”

The story told by him was such … Read on …
With each passing day the passport officer became softer and kinder to his colleagues and started making friends out of foes. One day, he visited his wife. She was having lunch. He went and sat on the chair next to her and said, “How are you?” She said nothing. He picked up a piece of roti from her plate and put it into his mouth. He said, “I’m hungry too.” With tears in her eyes she pushed the plate towards him and said, “You eat this. I’m not really hungry.” So, together the estranged couple shared a meal and bridged the gap of a number of years, cementing it with tears of joy and sorrow. To cut the long story short, the wife returned to live with her husband and so did the children. Now, his daughter was grown and he was calling to invite the friend to come and bless her at her wedding. And he said, “Sir, now I don’t just make money, I make a lot of friends too!”

How beautiful are the ways of God. Sometimes, He sends His message through someone in such a crisp way. But we don’t take the message, because it is not packaged in the way we want it. Almost everyone loves their own… spread your arms, you will be surprised how many you can gather into your embrace!