Today's Beautiful Gem: Thanks to all those who remain nameless!

        When the occasion arises to show appreciation and gratitude, we never
forget to remember people like our parents and grand-parents, siblings,
in-laws, uncles and aunts, cousins, friends, teachers, priests, and several
others, who tried to illumine our life's path. Besides, there are countless
others who may have briefly entered our firmament like a comet and left in a
hurry. We may be aware of the names of some of those kind souls. Many a
time, they remain anonymous. Let us offer tribute and thanks to all
those who just do their work-- the janitors and the helpers, the air-traffic
controllers, the police who strive to keep the law and order, the service
persons who dedicate their lives to defend the borders or to help to maintain
peace and amity in some far-off war-torn land and many other men and women.

        When I was about five, my father was moving the family from Sholinghur
to nearby Madras. We had to take a local passenger train at Arkonam Junction.
While our train was on the platform, another express train from Bombay was
cruising on to the same platform. To this day, I don't know whose presence of
mind averted a major catastrophe. But somebody WAS alert or I won't be here
to tell this story. Thanks to them! When I was recuperating after my surgery
in the Victoria Hospital in Bangalore, I had Jumma Khan in my next bed. My
friend Swaminatha Reddy used to visit me in the evenings. Otherwise, I was
alone then without anybody to look after me. Jumma Khan arranged to get food
for me through his children and was extremely kind. I never met him later.
Thanks to him and his family. Thanks also to the Muslim family who drove us
to the hospital when Vishnu, as a child, was choking after eating an insect!
In Aug 1980, when we landed in Indianapolis en route to Lafayette, in our
confusion, we lost our bus tickets. We spent nearly 25% of the US dollars we
had over those tickets! When we were wringing our hands, the person-in-charge
gave back our tickets telling us that they were retrieved by an Afro-American
woman who found them on the street! May God bless her! Finally, when I was
shivering with cold and pain after my automobile accident last year, how
promptly the ambulance staff arrived and made me comfortable and transported me
quickly to the hospital emergenccy room! Thanks to all of them! There are
many more such people to whom you and I must be thankful for! Their jobs may
not be glittering or their names may not be famous! However, they take their
work quite seriously. Wherever they may be and whatever they may do, may God
bless them with plenty of food as well as good during this holiday season!

Om shaantiH Peace! - J. K. Mohana Rao.

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