Happiness
It was 1 pm on a Monday, I was between the hiring process for my firm. I noticed that someone is consistently calling on my phone. I could not resist to know the urgency of the call even though I texted to call an hour later. I went out of the room and received the call. There is a call from one of our partner fleet owner who provides logistics supports to our company. Though he own 10 trucks, high inflation such as a rise in diesel price, driver cost, and slow increment of freight, and unpredictable pandemic led to downfall in his business.
I heard him gently, his shaky voice was in need of some kind of help. I asked him to be very transparent and share the purpose of the call. He was in Ranchi, around 300 km from my place for a wedding ceremony. His wife is at the last stage of giving birth to a baby. So, he admitted his wife to a nearby hospital for an emergency delivery. But he didn’t know about the hospitalization cost which was far beyond his reach of expense. I hope you guess it right, he is in urgent need of money.
Now the interesting part is, he is associated with 3 more companies as a logistics partner. He called all of them before calling me. He shared the same emergency situation with them, but one of them denied to pay him, the other two will pay on Thursday, three days after. Now he has more than high expectations from me. I asked him to tell me the amount so that I can check with my accountant whether we have surplus funds available or not. He immediately replied for 1 lakh rupees as the doctor package for delivering a baby is around 95000/- + 5000/- for foods and extra expense. I knew that we do not have money in our bank account, nor the savings because we are the bootstrap company and Covid has really impacted the business at the extremes.
The situation was critical, I was in a huge dilemma. I cannot deny him for help. My heart beats louder as no one in his family and friends were ready to help him immediately. I asked him to be patient and give me 10 minutes to think about the issue calmly. In between, I asked him to speak to the doctor and take 1–2 hours time for fund arrangement. I rang 4 of my friends and 7 staff members. I shared the situation and requested them to contribute 10,000/- each from their savings. The first two of them are office boy and sweeper. I am sure that they didn’t have any savings, but they extended their helping hand according to their convenience and contributed 2000/- each. The rest 5 contributed approx. 50,000/- and I contributed the remaining amount along with my friends. The power of trust and office culture has bought everyone together and within an hour, we managed to contribute the amount and transferred him.
Now, the real happiness was when he texted me around 7 pm on the same day. It bought tears to my eyes. I have never ever experienced such happiness.
He called me after texting. He was crying. I could feel the sense of happiness and thankfulness for me and my teammates in his words.
The real happiness lies in “Giving and Helping people”. Be a Go-Givers, not a Go-Getters.
