Searching For The Needle

We might have heard a story of Mulla Nasruddin, a very wise man – in fact. He was found toiling and sweating profusely under the scorching heat of sun in an afternoon on a roadside searching for a needle. Everyone who passed by pitied at him and said a few words of consolation. One passer-by, however, stopped to ask one more question. He inquired, “Mulla where exactly did you lose the needle?” Mulla Nasruddin replied, “In fact, I lost the needle in a corner of my house. But it is too dark to find the needle there. Here on the roadside there is enough light so I am searching for the needle here.” (Please do not ask for the exact version, the reference or the authenticity. Read it long time back in Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, in Wisdom of the Sufis.)

Let us relate this story. We too have lost our ‘needle’. Let us find out where actually we did. Certainly we did not lose it on the road where incidentally there is much light. The light shed by the media, by the politics, by the leaders, by the periodicals etc etc. The roadside is America, Western conspiracy, Imperial forces (against which Jamaat-e-Islami Hind has recently launched a campaign), the RSS, the BJP, and other Hindutva forces etc etc. They are under the broad day light for a number of factors. No matter how much light is there on the ‘road’ we will not find the ‘needle’ there.

Let us go back to the dark corner of our house and we will find the needle there. Would request the friends to shed more light on the dark ‘corner’ of our house.