Aspire For Most And More...

We can aspire for material goods. But will material wealth alone make us happy?

- Ramkumar S

A couple, married for about two years, lived in a small village that was fairly unknown but endowed with serene natural beauty. The husband who had a patch of paddy field was from this village and the wife was from a village about 20 kilometres away.

Married for just a couple of years, the husband could not stand his wife for her constant nagging. They would quarrel almost all the time and the husband, to escape from the nagging wife, used to spend most of his time outside the house with his friends. Those days, there was nothing called divorce, and so they got along together miserably!

One day, the man decided that he could no longer stand the nagging. He stormed out of the house saying that he wouldn't be back for a while. He set out of the house and decided to go to the other side of the mountain, into the neighbouring state. He walked to the foot of the mountain and started climbing.

In a while he came across a clearing where there was an old temple. He was surprised to see a temple there, where there was hardly any presence of human beings. He went inside but did not know what to do, and, as an act of surrender, fell before the idol and cried his heart out. He didn't speak; he just, cried, thinking about his predicament of living with a nagging wife.

He did not know how long he was lying there in the temple but after a while, which was after a very long time, the villager got up and was preparing to leave. Lo and behold, he saw the resplendent Lord right in front of him and he could not believe this to be real. Stunned by the darshan that the villager had never anticipated, he could not blink and or speak… The Lord was the first to speak. He told the villager that he could understand the villager's anguish and was prepared to grant the villager three boons.