Day of the Lion

In the bustling lanes of old Mysore, lived Nasim, a timid, middle-aged clerk at the district office. For years, he had turned a blind eye to the corruption around him. Files were buried under bribes, land meant for the poor was auctioned in secret, and no one questioned anything. Nasim survived by staying invisible — a jackal in a forest of hyenas.

Every day on his way home, he passed a statue of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore. Something about its unflinching gaze always lingered with him. His grandfather used to say, “Real courage is not in roaring but in standing alone when it matters.”

One morning, a tribal woman named Meenakshi arrived at his desk. Her forest land was being snatched under a forged order. Nasim saw the fear in her eyes — but more than that, he saw the same helplessness his own mother once had when their home was lost to greedy officials.

That evening, Nasim did something he had never done. He gathered all the files, made copies, and walked into a local journalist’s office. “Print this,” he said. “It might cost me everything. But silence has already taken more.”

The exposé shook the town. Nasim was suspended. Threats came. But he walked with a strange lightness — like a man who had finally stood up straight after a lifetime of stooping.

A few weeks later, Nasim met with a road accident and when Meenakshi came to visit him in the hospital, he was indeed proud to be alive like a wounded lion. The elderly person came with her quoted a proverb in their tribe as following:

"You have roared once — and it echoed through a thousand forests."

Moral: 

One moment of truth can outweigh a lifetime of compromise.

Inspiration:

It is better to live one day as a lion than 1000 years as a jackal. - Maharishi Vyasa