Dr. S. Padmapriya

Bengaluru, India

In the beginning, Jojo was a selfish boy. He was the first born of his parents' four children and always tried to garner for himself, most of the goodies that his parents would give his siblings. At school, his behaviour was no different. He never shared his stationery items with his poorer classmates and never gave even a drop of water (from his enormous pink coloured water bottle) to his friends. Soon, things came to such a state that threats of punishment and assurances of cajoling stopped having any effect on Jojo. 

  Now, Jojo's family had a very beautiful garden, which was very well maintained by their gardener. It had a number of varieties of fruit yielding trees. The guava tree yielded sweet guavas. It was so sweet that it tasted as if it had some amount of honey in it. Now, Jojo had a great fondness for these guavas but the guava tree yielded fruits only during a certain period of the year. So, Jojo used to wait patiently, each year, for the guava trees to bear fruits and he was invariably the first one to eat them. Jojo had a sling with which he used to pelt pebbles at the fruits making them to fall down. Now, this guava tree was a very good tree. It was a beautiful and dignified tree. It was very generous too and never minded the brutalities inflicted on its being by Jojo for it loved children. It was also proud to yield fruits and it firmly believed that its fruits were the best fruits around.

Soon, the fruit yielding period of the guava tree arrived. In the beginning, there was only one fruit but soon the numbers multiplied and lo! There were soon hundreds of guavas and this time too, Jojo was punctual. He arrived with his sling and bag of pebbles and was soon pelting the pebbles at the tree and eating its fruits. He had just eaten the tenth fruit when the neighbourhood children arrived. They begged him to share at least a few of his fruits with them but Jojo remained steadfastly cruel and selfish. Some of the little children even began to cry but he remained steady and strong like steel. Meanwhile, the tree was beginning to feel angry. It felt particularly insulted that Jojo was not willing to share his free gifts. After all - it had been very generous! So, it wondered as to why Jojo was being selfish. It decided to teach him a lesson. It sent a friend to purchase a few things.

 The next day, Jojo arrived and started pelting pebbles at the tree to gain a share of the fruits. In the beginning, one or two fruits fell on the ground and then there was retaliation.

 The tree brought out its sling and pebbles. Each time, the boy pelted pebbles; the tree also pelted pebbles on the boy. The boy was shocked.

 Then, the tree spoke, "You have been a very selfish boy, Jojo. You didn't share the fruits that I gave you for free. How do you feel when I am selfish?" Jojo replied, "I feel miserable. I am sorry." From then on, Jojo became a very generous boy. He became known to people as "Generous Jojo".