Mahatma moments

Mahatma moments

November 2023
Mahatma Moments 
Taking a cue from Mahatma Gandhi, Megha Bajaj learns to transform hurt into understanding and  positivity—into something bigger than what it started out as 

I love the life the Mahatma led,  
and I keep wondering, What  were the thoughts of the great  man? When he was thrown out  onto that cold platform in South  Africa due to racial discrimination,  two things could have happened:  First, he could have felt very  hurt, expressed or vented his  frustration, and finally moved on.  Second, and what he actually did,  was that instead of making the  indignity a personal hurt, he made  it a collective one—that which a  whole country was going through.  He sought a solution that changed  the world as we know it. 
I am an emotional person. I live  life in the depths, and hurt is  something that happens to me  too. Sometimes it is deep, and  other times, transient. Like all  others, I have found my own  mechanisms to cope with it and  keep moving. Sometimes I vent,  other times I express myself;  sometimes I dwell in self-pity,  other times I go into a shell.  
However, after this beautiful  realisation about Gandhi, I felt  there could be a better way. Life  being life, gave me a situation to  immediately test it. Someone very  close to me was unwilling to do a  little something I really wanted  him to, at a crucial juncture. He  

is someone who says he always  wants to be there for me, so I  couldn’t understand why, when I  was asking, he wasn’t obliging. 
The thing about hurt is—it just  is. You can’t always rationalise as  to why this hurt or that didn’t, or  why there was this much degree  of hurt. For whatever reason,  I couldn’t accept it and was  disturbed. 
Something phenomenal  happened to my thought process  as I kept watching myself. I  realised that my first response  was to simply vent it all out, and  if he got hurt in the process, so be  it. However, when I didn’t give in  to that carnal need, in some time,  the reactive thoughts settled. 
I watched my thoughts and  emotions in awe, and as I settled  even further, I realised hurt  is caused when someone does  something we don’t want them to  or doesn’t do something we want  them to. If I could find a way to  communicate why it meant so  much to me, without rubbing  him up the wrong way, perhaps it  would work. 
Between the message I was first  about to send and the message  I actually sent several hours  
later, everything within me had  transformed. I realised three  important things: 
1. If it is hurting, and it is a close  relationship that really matters,  suppressing won’t help. One is  not expected to be a doormat in a  beautiful relationship. 
2. There is a way to communicate  the emotion, which expresses  clearly what I want without  causing hurt to the other.  
3.I could use this situation to  perhaps help so many other  seekers to find answers to their  hurt through this article. 
I haven’t heard back from him and  whether he would do as I wish,  but something within me has  already transformed. Since I have  been able to express myself, I am  feeling relieved. Since I did it in  a beautiful way, I know it won’t  create drama and further hurt. If  things do go the way I want them  to, it will be extraordinary. If they  don’t, I am still left feeling so  beautiful about myself as a person.  And as a lover. 
Megha Bajaj is a bestselling  
author, film script writer and  
poet.  
An ardent seeker at heart, she  
also runs her online writing and  
healing workshops called WoW.  
You can read more about her on  
www.MeghaBajajWoW.com. 
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