The great man²¹

Yesterday on my way back from the United Nations I went to an Indian restaurant in Manhattan called Curry in a Hurry. A young man came up to me and said, “Are you Sri Chinmoy? I am so happy to see you. I interview great men like you.” Then he gave me a brochure about a book he had written on an Indian mental giant.

The man who was serving the food was looking at me with such admiration when he saw the other man talking to me, so I asked him, “Where do you come from?” First he said, “Bangladesh.” Then he said, “Chittagong.” Previously, whenever someone said he came from Bangladesh, it was always from some other district.

Here, for the first time, I heard “Chittagong,” which is my own district. And then he said the name of a village which is only four and a half miles away from my village. For seven or eight years he had been in Cairo.

Thousands of miles from Chittagong we met. So is this not destiny? If the other man hadn’t come up to me and said that I was a great man, I would probably not have spoken to the man who was serving. But if somebody says you are a great man, immediately ten persons look at you.