THE AND

A teenage boy barges into his house all angered up, shouting “I don’t know what the world wants, you do so much good, but they always are fixated at a single mistake you do. I can’t deal with this anymore.” Meanwhile, his grandfather interrupts him and asks for his help. He annoyingly asks “what do you want now?” His grandfather calmly replies “not much, but it will be great if you could give your opinion about the story I have written.” Hearing it, the boy calms down a little and asks “why are you asking me, you are an established writer, who am I to correct you.” The old man says “I just want to get an insight of your generation, it will be great to get a view of millennial.”

The boy is happy to help his grandfather; he feels happy as someone is giving credence to his opinion. He has forgotten all the rage he was having, and he asks for the story. His grandfather hands him few pages, and he starts to read them. After an hour of reading, he comes to his grandfather laughingly. The old man asks him of the matter, where he replies “you have written THE AND instead of The End.” The old man smiles and says “glad you noticed and mentioned it. Now just remove those words and tell me would it make the difference to the story.” The boy seems confused to hear that, and asks “why do you say that.”

The old man asks “there is a reason I have given you this story, do you remember that.” The boy replies “definitely I do, you have asked for a millennial point of view.” The grandfather asks, “then how is what you told me serving the purpose. You have just done what everyone in the world would have done, instead of improving the story, you are fixated at the easiest mistake you could have spotted, and you are demeaning me at that one. There are thousands of good words in this book, but you criticised it for just a single alphabet. And you ask world to give due credit to your good work and forget mistakes.”

The boy gets the point that his grandfather is not really asking for his view, but teaching him a life lesson. He understands that even he unconsciously makes little of the story, just to show his own worth, and was expecting the world to behave differently. He promises to appreciate the goodness of people, instead of just criticizing the bad they did. The old man says “that’s good you learnt your lesson, but people will still criticize you, you will still be disappointed.” The boy asks “then what shall I be doing to change it.” The grandfather replies “you can’t change the world, but you can change your expectations, if you expect only criticism, little act of goodness will make you happy.” The boy asks his grandfather for giving him the story again, so he could really improve it.

THE AND