Spirit of Islam, Nov-Dec 2025

S ome years ago I spent a few days in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda in central Africa. During this visit, I happened to meet a Gujarati Indian, who was living in Kigali as an immigrant. He was running a cloth shop in the city. One day I visited his shop and found that he was able to deal with his customers in fluent and understandable English. He seemed to have a good working knowledge of the language. One of his friends told me that there was an interesting story behind his English. When this Gujarati Indian first came to Kigali, and opened his shop, he was ignorant of the English language. But a large number of his customers were Englishspeaking, so he felt compelled to try to speak in English. During the early days, his English was far from correct. One day someone said to him, “If you are not in a position to speak correct English, why are you trying to speak in English?” The shopkeeper simply replied, “I speak incorrect English so that I may be able to speak correct English.” And so it came about. In two years’ time, he was able to deal with his customers in the English language. When I met him, he was fluent in English as a means of communication, and for a shopkeeper that was quite good enough. TRIALS IGNITE GROWTH PERSONAL EXPERIENCES If you have a strong enough will to achieve something, you will do so. Strong will itself is like successful schooling. Strong will makes you able to learn from experience, and it is a fact that for a sincere person, experience is a successful teacher.