SPARK

Sixty years ago, buses in Montgomery were divided into two sections... the front was reserved for the white people and the rear was kept aside for the black people. The sections were determined by the placement of a movable sign. If the ‘white’ section got filled up, it was extended by asking black persons to stand up and move to the rear. If there was no room, they had to get off the bus.

On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks who was sitting in the front row of the ‘black’ section of the bus was ordered out of her seat as the ‘white’ section had filled up. Rosa refused and as a consequence she was arrested. Parks’ action to reclaim her dignity was not the first... there were others, too. But her civil disobedience became the spark that precipitated the historic movement led by Martin Luther King.

Rosa wrote in her autobiography that ‘I didn't give up my seat because I was tired… I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old… just forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in… The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became’

So often, we give in to unfair situations because we give up on our own personal dignity. But when we stand up for real values, we will be better at aligning with humanism and common good. We can choose to transform into the significant spark that can overcome the worst of possibilities that may loom large.

Like Parks, let’s BE BETTER at asserting dignity
Little sparks can transform imbalanced reality!

- Pravin K. Sabnis