Offering Gratitude
Offering gratitude is a courteous way of acknowledging that you have benefitted either from people around you in the past, or at present; or from mother Nature and her varied creations; or from the Almighty.
During my childhood, my mother taught me to be grateful to the Almighty while praying at a temple, or before a picture of a deity. Feeding birds, animals or even ants in distress is an act of gratitude, often advised by astrologers. My mother would sometimes give me a fistful of grains and ask me to feed them to ants at an anthill, where hundreds of big-sized ants scurried around, in swarms. She would also urge me at least once a year to go to a local gaushala (a place where stray cows are taken care of by philanthropists), buy fodder there and feed to cows.
There is no set format to offer gratitude, but while doing so, one does get a sense of fulfilment, and a feeling of paying back. After her retirement, my mother would get up at 5 am daily and clean the whole street facing the length of our house, with a small broom. It was her way of offering quiet gratitude — to the neighborhood for sustaining a sense of social togetherness.
Prof. Reshef Tenne, an eminent scientist from Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, told me recently that for about ten years now, he has been donating about 1% of his monthly income to voluntary, non-profit organizations involved in preservation of Nature, assisting sick people, and/or providing food for the disabled. He said, “this is my gratitude to the society which encouraged me to be what I am today”!
Practising gratitude is an ongoing thing for me. I am 77, a retired scientist (ex-Associate Director, BARC), and educationist (ex-Chairman, A.E. Education Society), residing in Mumbai. When I look back at my life, I have benefitted enormously from: relatives during childhood, classmates during school/college days, and professional colleagues at workplace. It is built into my system to be grateful for positive actions by those who helped me. I do that in several ways, as discussed below.
With a WhatsApp group of my schoolmates, I discuss often, how we benefitted and flourished from the teachings of our schoolteachers, and from the ambience of our school (a Heritage institution established in 1915), where the best of facilities, including labs for science subjects, were maintained well.
On video/audio calls almost every day, I discuss, with pride, our family lineage with my two elder cousins, age 79 and 77, and recall the sacrifices of our ancestors, including my mother, who shaped our learning at school/college, and later helped in our professional careers.
As a gesture of paying back to my profession, I helped about 20 young researchers during my career to either secure post-doc positions in Europe, Japan, North America; or, got fellowships to PhD students among them to work in the labs of these countries for extended durations during their PhD days, to help them enrich their research profiles.
I have been publishing articles on several of my benefactors, be they my school-teachers, my relatives, or my mentors in science, such as the late Prof. O. Kahn from Bordeaux, and the late Prof. E. Fawcett from University of Toronto. I wrote a vox-populi article [1] offering gratitude to Prof. Eiji Osawa, a celebrated computational chemist from Japan who missed getting a Nobel Prize in Chemistry even though he was the first to have proposed the structure of C-60, the Fullerene molecule which laid the basis of nanoscience, primarily because he published his work in a Japanese language scientific journal in 1970s, which went unnoticed. Overwhelmed with the contributions of French scientists and pioneers, which shaped the modern world, I offered gratitude to them in the form of a special article [2].
It was not easy for me to convey how much I had benefitted during the 45 years of my active service as a scientist at BARC, when I retired in 2010. To handle that, I composed a poem to summarize it. The title of this poem was ‘Ummeed se Jyada’, conveying that I benefitted beyond my expectations from my interactions with BARC colleagues. I recited it on the occasion before nearly 100 senior-most scientist colleagues of this great institution, who comprise a Scientific Council constituted to review the progress of various programs run by this Research Centre.
It was tricky for me to offer gratitude to a very senior academic who gave a push to my career several times, but from behind the scenes, for good reasons. I am glad I could find an occasion to express my gratitude to him, humbly, in a subtle manner.
But, how to show my gratitude to someone who cared for me like an angel all through my childhood in 1950s. My family had rough times largely due to financial deprivation, and for several years, this neighbourhood aunty stood like a shield to lighten our hardships. She saw to it that I had the same treatment as her own children. My last meeting with her was when she was 85. She was affectionate as before, as I sat in quiet gratitude before her. She asked a few questions about my family. Each time, it was my cousin, who had accompanied me, replied, as I was overtaken by emotions and could hardly utter a word. Later, I put all my feelings of gratitude in an article [3], highlighting that ‘perhaps I survived due to her kindness’.
Offering gratitude to those who deserve, has a soothing influence on us. At times, you may not get a chance to offer gratitude to your benefactors directly. Then, look around and stand behind someone who deserves support, but isn’t getting any. Do so with the same zeal with which someone had supported you when you were in distress. For sure, it will have the same soothing effect, on you. Finally, a small gesture sometimes means big by way of gratitude. I practice that by showing a slide or two about my benefactors in my lectures, if the occasion allows.
REFERENCES
[1]. “Graceful, Humane — Even After Missing a Nobel Prize”, by J.V. Yakhmi, Medium (USA) 3 Dec. 2020. https://jvyakhmi.medium.com/graceful-humane-even-after-missing-a-nobel-prize-599aa63908fd
[2]. “Pioneering Contributions by France to Science, Entrepreneurship, Literature, and other Walks of Modern Life” By J.V. Yakhmi, Medium (USA), December 11, 2022. [this article was vetted by the French Nobel Laureate, Prof. J.-M. Lehn]. https://jvyakhmi.medium.com/pioneering-contributions-by-france-to-science-entrepreneurship-literature-and-other-walks-of-d046d64cc3b7
[3]. “Grateful, for supporting me generously”, by J.V. Yakhmi, Medium (USA), January 18, 2018. https://medium.com/@ya_kmi/grateful-for-supporting-me-generously-73ae236fd58a
