(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 27 June 2015, New York, USA, Bhagavad-gita 9.33)
When I was a kid, I was quite wild. One of my favourite games was to take a ball, throw it onto the roof of the house then climb up the drainpipe, grab the ball, come back down and throw it onto the roof again and climb up again… and I could do this for hours. I mean as a kid, you have too much energy and you do not know what to do with it all, so I found a way. Then, at that time, we had a maid and well, she did not like the game so much. So one day, she grabbed me and she grabbed by my ear and she squeezed it really hard between two fingers and turned it around at the same time, and I still remember it very well! Somehow or other, I pulled out of her grip and when I was free, I stood before her very calm and I said, “You wait until I grow up,” and she got it. I was serious, I thought, “Okay, you wait till I grow up,” and I was ready to grow up.
But when I grew up, I saw everything from a different perspective. I could appreciate that I was actually doing a dangerous thing and that she was concerned that I would fall from the roof which is fair enough. Of course, still it was a bit mean, rather than twist my ear that way, she could have sat me down and explained it to me nicely; that might have worked better. She could have given some descriptions of squashed tomatoes and kids that have sort of fallen off roofs and being taken away in an ambulance and so on… that might have impressed me! So I was still not in favour of her tactics but then again, I look it now in a different way and I now, I see that her intentions were actually benevolent.
