8 Pieces of Pizza: Touching Motivational Story

Wife: Don’t put so many clothes for wash today

Husband: Why ?

She said : Maid has said she won’t come for two days.

Husband :Why ?

Wife : She said she is going to meet her granddaughter during Ganpati festival.

Husband : OK, Will not put too many clothes. 

Wife : And , Shall I give her Rs. 500 for Ganpati ? Festival bonus ?

Husband : Why ? Diwali is approaching , we will give her at that time...

Wife : Oh no dear . She is poor. Going to meet her daughter and granddaughter , so she will also feel nice. Moreover, everything has become so expensive these days. How will she able to celebrate festival ?

Husband : You ! I don’t know why you become emotional so easily. You ought not to indulge the or else...

Wife : Oh dear, don’t worry .I am going to cancel today’s program of ordering

Pizza. Why unnecessarily blow away Rs. 500 on eight pieces of stale bread.

Husband : Wow. Great .Snatching Pizza from us and giving to the maid !
Maid returned after three days and got busy in mopping and dusting. Husband asked her.

Husband : So, how was the vacation ? 

Maid : very nice sahib.. Didi had given Rs 500 .. festival bonus.

Husband : So you went and met your daughter ? and also met your granddaughter ? 

Maid: yes sahib. Enjoyed a lot and spent Rs 500 in two days time.

Husband : Really ? Ok so what did you do with Rs. 500?

Maid : Rs. 150 for dress for granddaughter, Rs 40 for a doll, bought sweets worth Rs 50 for daughter, Rs 50 as offering to Deity in temple, Rs 60 towards bus fare….Rs 25 for bangles for daughter, bought a nice belt worth Rs 50 for son-in-law, balance Rs 75 gave to daughter to buy copy and pencil for granddaughter. Maid gave a full account of the expenses incurred.

Husband : so much in Rs 500?

With surprise, he started thinking….the eight pieces of Pizza appeared in front of his eyes and each one of them acted as a hammer started pricking his consciousness. For the price of one Pizza , he started comparing the expenses his maid had incurred during her visit to her daughter. The eight pieces of Pizza floated in front of his eyes. First piece .. dress for the child, second piece… towards sweets.. Third piece… towards offering to the deity in the temple. Fourth piece….towards bus fare. Fifth piece.. towards doll. Sixth piece towards bangles, seventh piece ,, towards belt for the son-in-law. Eight piece towards copy and pencil. 

So far he had observed pizza only from one angle. He turned it upside down and observe how it looks like from the other side. .. but today his maid showed him the other side of the pizza…. The eight pieces of pizza showed him the real meaning of life..in an instant the meaning of “Spending for life” or “ Life for spending"

Just imagine we do waste lot of money in terms of buying pizza, getting to the five star restaurants, buying costly jewelleries, roaming in an expensive car, smoking packets after packet cigarettes or even pricing for a bottle of whisky and so on. Could you ever think how much money you have spent for those so called luxuries ever day? Could you ever think your petrol expense is much more than the total income of a family struggling to earn. Yeah, I do believe you have to set a lot of fuel to earn those. Hence the money is all yours. Obviously you are god gifted. But just begging to you... be sensible, be humane enough. Just click the button of consciousness in your heart. You come to see the larger picture. Your wasted extra-expenses may flourish smile in a baby’s face that has been suffering in cancer or can break the starvation of a miserable family. 

Just do something meaningful in your life.   

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50 Most Interesting facts About O Henry You should know

1) O Henry was the most popular pen name of the famous American short-story writer William Sydney Porter.

2) Debate runs about the origin of this pen name. When William was asked “What does ‘O’ stand for?”. He replied "O stands for Olivier, the French for Oliver." "Why don’t you use a plain initial letter, then?" again he was asked. "Good," said William, "O is about the easiest letter written, and O it is." Again there were lot of people in his life who used to call him “Oh Henry!”

3) Apart from O Henry he had various other pen names such as S.H. Peters, James L. Bliss, T.B. Dowd, and Howard Clark.

4) William Sidney Porter was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina, America.

5) His father was Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter, a physician, and his mother Mary Jane Virginia Swaim Porter.

6) At the age of three, O Henry became motherless as she died of Tuberculosis.

7) O Henry took his graduation from his aunt, Evelina Maria Porter's elementary school in 1876. He then enrolled at the Lindsey Street High School. His aunt continued to tutor him until he was fifteen.

8) At age of 16 he started working in his uncle’s medicine store.

9) In 1881 he got his pharmacist licence.

10) Besides he was an avid reader of classic and dime novel.

11) In 1882, O. Henry travelled with Dr. James K. Hall to Texas in March 1882, hoping that a change of air would help alleviate a persistent cough he had developed.

12) After getting recovered he moved to Austin where he took a number of different jobs over the next several years, first as pharmacist then as a draftsman, bank teller and journalist. He also began writing as a sideline.

13) Besides O Henry was a good singer and musician and loved to act in drama. He could play guitar and mandolin. He became a member of the "Hill City Quartet", a troop of serenaded young women.

14) There he fell in love with Athol Estes, a girl of just 17 from a wealthy family.

15) Athol’s mother opposed the affair as Athol was a patient of Tuberculosis.

16) On July 1, 1887, O Henry eloped with Athol and got married soon.

17) Athol encouraged her husband to pursue his writing. Athol gave birth to a son in 1888, who died hours after birth, and then a daughter, Margaret Worth Porter in next year.

18) O Henry's old friend Richard Hall became Texas Land Commissioner and offered Porter a job.

19) Porter started as a draftsman at the Texas General Land Office (GLO) in 1887 at a salary of $100 a month, drawing maps from surveys and field notes. The salary was enough to support his family, but he continued his contributions to magazines and newspapers.

20) But his job at the GLO was a political appointment by Hall. When his friend lost the election Porter had to resign in early 1891.

21) The same year, Porter began working at the First National Bank of Austin as a teller and bookkeeper at the same salary he had made at the GLO. Henry was careless in keeping books or may have embezzled (stealing) fund. In 1894 he was accused for embezzlement and terminated from his job.

22) He then worked full-time on his humorous weekly called The Rolling Stone but it failed since the paper never provided an adequate income. However, his writing and drawings had caught the attention of the editor at the Houston Post.

23) O Henry moved to Houston for writing career.

24) Strange enough O Henry gathered ideas for his column by loitering in hotel lobbies and observing and talking to people there.

25) While living at Houston Porter was arrested on the charge of embezzlement in The First National Bank as federal auditor audited the bank and found shortage of fund.

26) O Henry's father-in-law posted bail to keep him out of jail. He was due to stand trial on July 7, 1896.

27) But a day before, he suddenly fled to New Orleans and then to Honduras with which the United States had no extradition treaty at that time. 

28) In Honduras O Henry became friend with Al Jennings, a notorious train robber and stayed at Trujillo Hotel for several months.

29) There he wrote Cabbages and Kings in which he coined the term "banana republic" to describe the country, a phrase subsequently used widely to describe a small, unstable tropical nation in Latin America with a narrowly focused, agrarian economy.

30) At that time Athol became seriously ill. When he learned that his wife was dying, Porter returned to Austin in February 1897 and surrendered to the court, pending an appeal.

31) Once again, Porter's father-in-law posted bail so that he could stay with Athol and Margaret.

32) Athol died of tuberculosis on July 25, 1897.

33) Porter had little to say in his own defence, and was found guilty of embezzlement in February 1898, sentenced to five years in prison, and imprisoned on March 25, 1898 at the Ohio Penitentiary.

34) As O Henry was a licensed pharmacist he was given the service in the Prison hospital.

35) Remaining in jail he published 14 stories under the pseudo name “O Henry” which appeared first in the short story "Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking" as he wanted to hide the identity of the imprisoned author.

36) After serving three years of imprisonment O. Henry was finally released on July 24, 1901   for his good conduct.

37) Henry reunited with his 11 years old daughter Margaret who was never told that her father had been in prison—just that he had been away on business.

38) His most fertile writing period began in 1902 when he choosed to move New York.

39) There he wrote a short story in every week for New York World Sunday Magazine.

40) He wrote almost 381 short stories.

41) His short stories are generally adored for their surprise twist and ending.

42) O Henry’s collections of short stories are Cabbages and Kings, Roads of Destiny, Whirligigs etc.

43) His most popular short story "The Gift of the Magi," a poverty-stricken New York couple secretly sell valued possessions to buy one another Christmas gifts. Ironically, the wife sells her hair so that she can buy her husband a watch chain, while he sells his watch so that he can buy her a pair of combs.

44) Henry went to his native state North Carolina in 1907 and met his childhood beloved Sarah Lindsey Coleman and married her.

45) Sarah was also a writer who wrote a novella Wind of Destiny about their courtship.

46) Henry became a heavy drinker and his health deteriorated that didn’t support his writing. His wife left him.

47) On June 5, 1910 O Henry breathed his last because of cirrhosis of the liver.

48) He was buried in the Riverside Cemetery in Asheville, North Carolina.

49) His final work was "Dream", a short story intended for the magazine The Cosmopolitan but left incomplete at the time of his death.

50) O Henry had an obvious affection for the city, which he called "Bagdad-on-the-Subway", and many of his stories are set there.

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11 Must Read Question-Answer Between Krishna and Arjuna That Will Surely Motivate You

In the greatest Hindu epic Mahabharata, we find many love, hatred and friendship stories. However the relation Lord Krishna and Pandava Arjuna shared was a special one. This was the relation for true friendship in which Lord Krishna always guides his Mitra ( Arjun) in the lighted way with plenty of motivating and philosophical speeches which have been inspiring a tremendous impact upon agitated hearts and leads us finding the true essence of life. Here is a beautiful conversation between Krishna and Arjun which may inspire us in a great way for discovering the solutions of some critical problems that we face in day-to-day life.

1. Arjun :- I can’t find free time. Life has become hectic.

Krishna:- Activity gets you busy. But productivity gets you free.

2. Arjun :- Why has life become complicated now?

Krishna :- Stop analyzing life… It makes it complicated. Just live it.

3. Arjun :- Why are we then constantly unhappy?

Krishna :- Worrying has become your habit. That’s why you are not happy.

4. Arjun :- Why do good people always suffer?

Krishna :- Diamond cannot be polished without friction. Gold cannot be purified without fire. Good people go through trials, but don’t suffer.
With that experience their life becomes better, not bitter.

5. Arjun :- You mean to say such experience is useful?

Krishna :- Yes. In every term, Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first and the lessons later.

6. Arjun :- Because of so many problems, we don’t know where we are heading…

Krishna:- If you look outside you will not know where you are heading. Look inside. Eyes provide sight. Heart provides the way.

7. Arjun :- Does failure hurt more than moving in the right direction?

Krishna:- Success is a measure as decided by others. Satisfaction is a measure as decided by you.

8. Arjun :- In tough times, how do you stay motivated?

Krishna :- Always look at how far you have come rather than how far you have to go. Always count your blessing, not what you are missing.

9. Arjun :- What surprises you about people?

Krishna :- When they suffer they ask, “why me?” When they prosper, they never ask “Why me?”

10. Arjun :- How can I get the best out of life?

Krishna:- Face your past without regret. Handle your present with confidence. Prepare for the future without fear.

11. Arjun :- One last question. Sometimes I feel my prayers are not answered.

Krishna:- There are no unanswered prayers. Keep the faith and drop the fear. Life is a mystery to solve, not a problem to resolve. Trust me. Life is wonderful if you know how to live

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