Beautiful Encounter

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 12 Aug 2024

Dr. Ravi P. Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service

10 Aug 2024 – These days I am living in a big city—Toronto–in Canada. I have come to this large city from India, which is having quite a warm and uncomfortable season. The current weather here is quite pleasant and so one sees many people coming to Toronto both for enjoyment and for official purposes. Many students come here for studies also. People are coming to Canada not only from India, China , Italy  but also from other countries.

People come to Toronto to know what is happening  in the world politically, economically and even spiritually. They come here for work and also for pleasure and sight seeing. Toronto is a major town of Canada being its biggest city and is the capital of the province of Ontario. Its population is about   3 million people. One can see a large number of cars and trucks on the roads. Although it is the biggest city of Canada, it is not its capital — the capital being Ottawa.

During summer months — May, June, July and August, one can see large darkish clouds in the sky in the mornings. These clouds appear to bring a lot of rain but not always. Many a time they seem to cover most of the sky and look beautiful and overwhelming to people.

Toronto’s large population is quite varied — it comes from many countries of the world. There are large number of Chinese, Indians, Italians, Greeks and people of other countries who have now made Toronto as their home and for work. People work in several institutions for academic, business and spiritual pursuits and interests.

Surprisingly there are a few people of Turkey also in some regions of Toronto. I am writing this mainly because there is no special relationship of Turkey with Canada or Toronto. But one particular region of Toronto is mainly Turkish. I happened to go to this region where Turkey has opened a huge restaurant cum sales office.

There I talked to a few of the persons of this sales office. One of these persons was a beautiful young lady of about 28 or 30 years. I asked her name ; she mentioned it but it was an unusual name which I could not quite understand. The lady then took out a paper of her small diary and wrote down her name on the paper.

Her name as she wrote down in clear terms in bold letters on the paper was    Zeliha. I read the name and then tried to pronounce it. I asked her if the name meant anything special in Turkish language . She replied ‘Yes, it means a beautiful lady’. And then she smiled broadly and said ‘Am I not beautiful ?’

I was struck by her candour and her smile. ‘Of course you are beautiful.’

I also smiled and repeated the words of beauty to her — in fact repeated her name loudly. She smiled happily and walked into her office.

I was so much struck by my brief interaction with her that I am now writing it down for the readers of this column. Strange meeting, stranger interaction .

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Dr Ravi P Bhatia is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, an educationist, Gandhian scholar and peace researcher. Retired professor, Delhi University. His new book, A Garland of Ideas—Gandhian, Religious, Educational, Environmental was published recently in Delhi. ravipbhatia@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 12 Aug 2024.

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