My name is Arjun, and I once believed that Dharma meant following rules — strict lines drawn between right and wrong. But then I lost everything, and Dharma became something else entirely.
It happened after my business collapsed. I'd spent sixteen years building it, honoring every commitment, paying my workers on time, donating to the temple each Navaratri. But one year, the rains failed, the crops failed, and suddenly my clients couldn’t pay. I waited, borrowed, begged — and when even the last delivery truck was seized, I sat on the floor of my empty warehouse and wept.
I had failed. Not just financially, but as a son, a provider, a man of dharma. That’s how I felt.
I stopped going to temple. Each morning I’d sit under the neem tree in our lane, pretending to read the newspaper while watching ants carry food with a determination that mocked me.
One morning, the neighborhood children passed by on their way to school. I watched quietly until a small boy from the last row ran back. He was tiny — maybe six — with large eyes and torn sandals. He bent before the neem tree and whispered, “Thank you, Tree Devata, for shade on hot days.”
He ran off. That was all.
But I sat there, frozen, his words echoing. Thank you, Tree Devata...
I remembered something from the Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 2, Verse 47): “Your right is to work only, but never to its fruits.” I’d worked so long for the outcome — success, status, respect. But that little boy? He thanked the tree not for fruit, but just for its presence.
I stood and walked home. It was the first time my back felt straight in weeks.
That evening, I swept the prayer room. Lit the diya — the small oil lamp — not because I felt holy, but because it felt like beginning again. Just a flame in a dark room, no audience.
Over the next weeks, I started tailoring from home — small jobs, hand-stitched blouses. Quiet work. Honest work. One lady inside the colony paid me in rice and ghee. The Gita's words returned often — reminding me not to chase reward, but to walk steady.
In time, I realized that Dharma isn’t a narrow path — it’s walking with right intention, even when the world turns upside down. Like in the Ramayana, when Sita, stolen and heartbroken, stayed rooted in her faith, even in the forests of Lanka.
Or like Bhima from the Mahabharata, who bore the weight of grief and exile but never let go of his commitment to justice.
Resilience, I learned, is not refusal to break — it’s choosing to rebuild, again and again, led by Dharma like a thread through the dark.
I may never own a warehouse again. But each morning, I touch the earth and offer pranam — not in achievement, but in alignment. The kind of alignment even a child with torn sandals knows.
And that, I think, is the real fruit.
My name is Arjun, and I once believed that Dharma meant following rules — strict lines drawn between right and wrong. But then I lost everything, and Dharma became something else entirely.
It happened after my business collapsed. I'd spent sixteen years building it, honoring every commitment, paying my workers on time, donating to the temple each Navaratri. But one year, the rains failed, the crops failed, and suddenly my clients couldn’t pay. I waited, borrowed, begged — and when even the last delivery truck was seized, I sat on the floor of my empty warehouse and wept.
I had failed. Not just financially, but as a son, a provider, a man of dharma. That’s how I felt.
I stopped going to temple. Each morning I’d sit under the neem tree in our lane, pretending to read the newspaper while watching ants carry food with a determination that mocked me.
One morning, the neighborhood children passed by on their way to school. I watched quietly until a small boy from the last row ran back. He was tiny — maybe six — with large eyes and torn sandals. He bent before the neem tree and whispered, “Thank you, Tree Devata, for shade on hot days.”
He ran off. That was all.
But I sat there, frozen, his words echoing. Thank you, Tree Devata...
I remembered something from the Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 2, Verse 47): “Your right is to work only, but never to its fruits.” I’d worked so long for the outcome — success, status, respect. But that little boy? He thanked the tree not for fruit, but just for its presence.
I stood and walked home. It was the first time my back felt straight in weeks.
That evening, I swept the prayer room. Lit the diya — the small oil lamp — not because I felt holy, but because it felt like beginning again. Just a flame in a dark room, no audience.
Over the next weeks, I started tailoring from home — small jobs, hand-stitched blouses. Quiet work. Honest work. One lady inside the colony paid me in rice and ghee. The Gita's words returned often — reminding me not to chase reward, but to walk steady.
In time, I realized that Dharma isn’t a narrow path — it’s walking with right intention, even when the world turns upside down. Like in the Ramayana, when Sita, stolen and heartbroken, stayed rooted in her faith, even in the forests of Lanka.
Or like Bhima from the Mahabharata, who bore the weight of grief and exile but never let go of his commitment to justice.
Resilience, I learned, is not refusal to break — it’s choosing to rebuild, again and again, led by Dharma like a thread through the dark.
I may never own a warehouse again. But each morning, I touch the earth and offer pranam — not in achievement, but in alignment. The kind of alignment even a child with torn sandals knows.
And that, I think, is the real fruit.
