Many years ago I was watching ‘Koffee with Karan’ and enjoyed him interviewing Rishi Kapoor and wife Neetu. Theirs is a marriage that has lasted quite a few decades and in the film kingdom this is a record of sorts. What I loved best however was when Neetu turns to hubby and tells Karan, “he’s a good man!

May be he drinks a little too much once in a way. May be he loses his temper, he’s no saint, but he’s a good man.”

Ever so often I see a husband and wife pair who look like ‘beauty and the beast’ and I find myself wondering what ever made the pretty girl marry such ugly fellow or vice versa, and then in the course of conversation I find them telling me about each other, “he is a good person.”

Moses Mendelssohn, the grandfather of the famous German composer, was short of stature and, even worse, was hunch-backed. But he was madly in love with the attractive daughter of a rich merchant in Hamburg. Once when he visited the merchant, he was allowed to go to her room. The beautiful young woman was shocked by his ugly, misshapen figure, and did not even look up at him. Several attempts to make conversation with her failed. Then he had an idea and said, “When a boy is born, the Lord in heaven announces which girl he will marry. At my birth the Lord said that my future bride, will be humpbacked. But I pleaded with the Lord and said give me the hump and let the woman be beautiful.’ The Lord answered my prayer.”

The girl was deeply moved by these words. She turned her face to Moses, gave him her hand, and later became his wife.

I am sure the hunchback looked after his wife well and later when people asked her about him; she must have smiled and said the very same words, ‘he is a good man.’

Beauty fades, doesn’t it?

And it fades so fast. Handsome husband turns out to be beast in sheep’s clothing as he looks with wandering eye at anything that wears skirts. Or, hardworking, devout husband finds his wife a flirt and is horrified by her advances to all and sundry.

Scratch beauty and there could be monster inside, sometimes.

When Samuel, prophet of the Jews, was searching for a king for Israel he looked at many handsome men and asked God, “isn’t this the man?” God told him, “Man looks on the outside, I look at the heart.”

That I think is what we should pray for; to be able to see beyond ugliness, beyond good looks and into the heart, then Like Neetu we can turn to the TV host and say, “he’s a good man” or “she is a good woman!”

That is true beauty..!

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