Guidelines On The Value Of Giving

A new development is revolutionizing many lives in the hamlets of India by bringing brightness where there used to be blackness.

The New York Times published an article titled, “Husk Power for India”. Electricity, which is prevalent in the lives of many in developed nations, is a pure luxury in remote areas of developing ones. What was once fed to animals now is used to generate electricity – rice husks.

Raised in the rural state of Bihar, Manoj Sinha understood what it was like to sit in darkness. Being an engineer with Intel Corporation he had all the ability to bring alive the dream of a lifetime. He led the advancement of his power equipment that produces electricity from rice husks and other farm wastes and now he trades it to hamlets across India.

Sinha is what could be called a reformative businessman because he feels business is the answer to major social problems. “Business leaders must realise that the world’s poor need investments more than handouts,” he says, adding, “these are customers, not victims.”

The article stimulated me to think about gifting in a different way prompting me to ask myself, “what is the most ideal form of giving?” Is it learning, business transaction or aid work? There are so many methods to make a difference. One way of gifting can appear to be more effectual or maintainable than other ways based on the way it is conveyed, seen or applied.

I then came to identify there were eight sections to giving as a form to perceive this. So, let me outline the eight methods; which in effect are often ‘phases’ of giving as well.

Stage one: Necessity – saving and helping others who are afflicted by natural catastrophe, contagious diseases or other unmanageable conditions.

Stage two: Reprieve – providing reprieve from long-standing malnutrition, penury, illnesses, handicaps or inequity which otherwise would prolong or get worsened because of the lack of perception, edification or resources.

Stage three: Remedying and defense – internally, bodily and psychologically. Many people carry injuries that may be invisible but could be severely confining their lives. Giving the remedy to release the buried trauma creates better facilities for them while giving proper protection gives them a sense of defense.

Phase four: Edification – giving better edification, awareness and skill imparting to create empowered and innovative solutions to generating resources while helping people to discover their exclusive talent to succeed.

Phase five: Innovative investment – giving a helping hand, cash or material to those who have the ability to make a change. This gets weighed many times as the materials increase and is passed on to several others who again create more out of the chances given.

Phase six: Maintainability – working collectively involving the people in the local surroundings, creating maintainable society – ecologically and communally.

Stage seven: Empowerment – sanctioning and influencing the people to set free their true capability and drive to make a difference. In this group of offering, the aim of offering changes from ‘giving to those who are in need’ to ‘giving people an opening to give to others’ and to the whole group.

Stage eight: Loving – just doing whatever we feel to do to love and care for others. No strategy or expected outcome exists in this stage of giving. ‘Giving’ does not even exist here in the traditional sense of the word, as there is no sense of possession or judgment or desire to change anything. This is where we do not even have to think about anything, we give as a part of our own joyful experience.

What we also see is that at each of these eight phases of sharing there are many things that the giver gets in return.

One: Sense of bonding

Two: Sense of comfort

Three: respite from hurt (our own)

Four: Gratitude for our own knowledge, skills and circumstances

Five: Long-term sense of involvement and fulfillment for our own life

Six: Improved atmosphere for our own life and for the lives of all those we value and cherish

Seven: Soul rewarding stimulation and commitment to our own purpose

Eight: Love

Giving has many planes and understandings upon the basis of the giver and the beneficiary. And the ‘levels’ do not explain which one is higher than the other. All are imperative.

I was gifted with an experience early in 2008 while travelling with a group of dedicated entrepreneurs through India to see how we could be more effective in our giving. I was blessed to have one particular experience that made me think about what ‘effective giving’ really meant.

We were in a small town one day. Four of us had just called a taxi to take us to another town in the vicinities. We bargained with the driver with care as our hotel staff had told us beforehand that we could be duped since we were not local.

We stopped in front of the local train station for a short break on the way. While the others disappeared off to use the bathroom, I started a conversation with our taxi driver standing next to the taxi. With very limited English and a full smile exposing his blackened front teeth, he told me that he had a house on the outskirts of the town and he had a young wife and two children who went to the local school – I started to feel connected to him.

I congratulated him on having such a loving family and told him that I also had two children similar ages to his. When the others returned he spontaneously invited us to come to his house for lunch. I thought it was just a friendly courtesy he wanted to show at first. However, after dropping us off in the town centre, he insisted that he would wait for us until we finished our exploration in town. And he did. I was actually quite surprised to see him still waiting at the side of the road standing next to his taxi more than hour later. We jumped back into the taxi and he zoomed off up the road to where his family lived.

When we landed there we were quite surprised to see the way he was living. It was in fact quite similar (if not worse) to the existence of the slum dwellers we had visited before that. From the bright new taxi he was driving, who could have pictured this

As the car turned into the narrow unsealed road between the hut-like houses that were constructed with crudely made concrete blocks and painted mud walls, we felt contrite about having agreed to his invitation. For a brief moment I felt mortified. “How could I have exploited the generosity of a man who didn’t seem to have anything and I didn’t even get any edible stuff or presents for his family”, I thought.

As we walked into his house, we saw a pan and small stove on the mud floor. His very shy wife nodded blushing in surprise and disappeared into the small storeroom (a cupboard size) next to it. As I looked in, I saw the next-door neighbours handing over some teacups to his wife over the crumbled concrete fence. They didn’t even have extra teacups in their house. There was only one small room fitted out with one single bed and an old galvanised chest next to it.

The driver hastily drew out three hand-woven mats from the trunk and spread them out on whatever little space there was on the mud floor and put one on the bed.

Soon the cups of tea and some snacks arrived. All his children and children from the neighborhood came to see us and stood in the doorway. All six of us were totally squashed in the tiny room. I curiously asked him where all his children were sleeping. I thought they probably had another space somewhere. To my surprise, he cheerfully pointed the chest and said it was their bed with his beaming smile.

He cheerfully informed us that he was a dancing expert of the area and pointed at the medals displayed on the recess above his bed. Bent on showing us his dancing skills he at once ran outside. From some place music started coming into the tiny room. He has no arrangement for music in the house, it was flowing in from outside. I wondered where it came from till I saw him bringing his taxi in reverse to the back wall of his house with the doors open and music flowing in from the high volume car radio!

The time moved fast (with his dancing and the many more cups of tea that followed) and very soon it was time to thank them for their great warmth and courtesy and make our move. As we got ready to leave and express our gratitude to him and his wife, he pulled out the best of all the rugs he had, and just gave it to us. It was one of the very few things he owned. It was impossible to believe that he was offering it to us.

We all courteously begged off his gift and moved out waving goodbye to all the people waving back at us. We got real baffled about the whole affair. Should we have paid them something as they surely had only too little money? Should we have consented to take the cherished gift he made us?

As I was thinking about this life-changing experience a few days later, I thought about the refusal of his gift. He looked disappointed that we didn’t take the gift. It wasn’t just about saying no to the gift that stuck in my mind.

I realised that the feeling of restlessness I felt was in reality the result of seeing him as less privileged. I was feeling that I couldn’t probably receive anything from someone who owned too little.

But did he really have nothing much? Maybe he had much more – many more.

Maybe the greatest gift we could have given him then was to receive his gift in total respect and gratitude.

Every act of sharing and taking are indispensable for us to fill our world with profusion and satisfaction in equal measure for both sharer and taker. We can start doing this instead of evaluating and validating one over another. The beautiful act of sharing and taking requires no additional elucidation.

Manoj Sinha’s words echo in my mind once again, “these are customers, not victims.” I can imagine the smiling faces of the villagers who are now proud to have electricity in their villages and the children who now can read books and learn in their homes at night.

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