In English
Parents should be good examples to children
Let me tell you a story to illustrate the danger of such small beginnings. A mother carried her son on her shoulder, when she went to the market. A woman with a basket of fruits passed by her the child lifted a banana from that basket and started eating it. The mother noticed it, and when she was told that he had cleverly lifted it from the basket of a passing fruit seller, she complimented the son on its smartness. This made the child indulge in petty thieving and picking pockets, as it grew into a boy and in actual house breaking and , Once during a , he committed even murder, and when he was caught and jailed, he expressed a wish to see his mother before being hanged. The wailing weeping desperate mother was brought before him. She was sobbing at her son's fate. The son asked her to come closer to him; suddenly he tried to strangle her, and the guards separated them. The son said, "she deserves the punishment; for, it was she who brought me to this doom. Had she reprimanded me when I stole a banana when I was a child of two years instead of complimenting me, I would not have fallen into this evil way." Parents set bad examples uttering falsehood, scandalising others, gambling, drinking, behaving violently, inflicting injury, becoming addicted to night-clubs, pictures and drinking parties, quarrelling at home after arriving home past mid-night. How can children used to such low sights and sounds learn to become bright fresh flagrant flowers of the Garden of India? Many such parents do not allow their children to join the Classes, or to attend and . If the children clamour at home that they may be permitted, they shout at them, and call them mad. They say that religion and God are only for idlers or old senile people, and that the path will lead them on to (mendicancy), which is a calamity to be avoided! They reverse the very values of life. Parents must correct themselves before they try to correct their children.