હું વસ્તુ સૌથી મોંઘેરી ને જાજરમાન વહેંચું છું, ઓલ્યા ઇમાન વેચે છે ને હું મુસ્કાન વહેંચું છું.” - શાહબુદ્દીન રાઠોડ

Dear Readers, 

25th December 2017 was and will be the greatest day I can never forget in my life. I was fortunate enough to have spent some moments with very well known and highly reputed Gujarati Humorist, philosopher and performing comedian artist, Shree Sahabudding Rathod !!

@Aashiyana, Thangadh with Sree Sahabuddin Bhai

"શાહબુદ્દીન રાઠોડ" આઠ અક્ષરનું આ નામ સાંભળતા જ સૌના ચહેરા ઉપર હાસ્ય ફરી વળે કારણ સમગ્ર વિશ્વમાં ભાગ્યે જ કોઈ ગુજરાતી એવો હશે જે શાહબુદ્દીન રાઠોડ અને ‘વનેચંદના વરઘોડા’ થી અજાણ હશે. 

Shree Shahabuddin Rathod was born on 9 December 1937 at Thangadh (now in Surendranagar district, Gujarat, India). He was born and raised in a Gujarati. He was a teacher from 1958 to 1971 and a school principal from 1971 to 1996 at Municipal School of Thangadh, Gujarat.

જીત પર હસતો રહ્યો ને હાર પર હસતો રહ્યો... ફુલોની શૈયા ગણી અંગાર પર હસતો રહ્યો... એ મુસીબત એટલી જીંદાદીલી ને દાદ દે... તે ધરી તલવાર તો હું ધાર પર હસતો રહ્યો..... 

I have been listening to his recordings, videos of his programs at various places and read books written by him, I have learned and continue learning lots of inspiring things from his humor and philosophy on various topics of life with his simple and easily digestible examples. I always wanted to meet him since 2008 (time since I started following and listening to his speeches, programs, CDs, online videos, his books), We (few like-minded) tried meeting him in the year of 2009 and approached her to personally thank him but at that time Sahabudding Bhai was out of country and we could not meet him. Since then I had a wish to meet him one day! 25th Dec, 2017 was the day!

How I got an opportunity to meet him? My mother in law was a student of Mr. Sahabuddin bhai and was studying at Thangadh municipal school during the 70s, In our last India trip they found out that I am a big fan of Sahabuddin Bhai and have a wish to meet him. They immediately approached few people in Thangadh and helped us meet Sahabudding bhai. We found out that he is available to meet on 25th Dec, They told us to come around 4:00pm at his house as he wanted to leave to Rajkot to attend some social event. This was a dream come true, so I was so excited for this meeting. We all reached at "Aashiyana" @ sharp 4:00pm. He requested us to come to upstairs, we went there, he then requested us to take a sit. We introduced our self, he was happy to know we especially come there to thank him, and he said "હું વસ્તુ સૌથી મોંઘેરી ને જાજરમાન વહેંચું છું, ઓલ્યા ઇમાન વેચે છે ને હું મુસ્કાન વહેંચું છું"  I firstly thanked him for giving such a nice Gujarati literature and positive philosophy on many important topics of life with nice humor. He is very down to earth person discussed few important things on human life with a simple philosophy.

There are thousands of important points from his great literature but here are few important that inspires us a lot to think for self-realization:

• Troubles start only when people start comparing themselves to others!
• Irregular life is ugly life, we should live life with certainness!
• Humor is the shortest distance from human to God!
• You should write something which is worth reading or you should live your life which is worth writing about
• ગંભીરતા વગર નું હાસ્ય અને હાસ્ય વગર ની ગંભીરતા, બન્ને વ્યર્થ છે. (Laughter without seriousness and Seriousness without Laughter, is Waste)
• હું નથી જાણતો એટલું બોલવા પેહલા તો ઘણું જાણવું પડે
• Simplicity, More spoken, very less Implemented
• 
  

We tried to fetch some interesting treasure from his knowledge bank. Many people know him as a Gujarati humorist but his personalities has few other corners too. He himself is a good reader and a painting is his another hobby. He showed us some of the painting drawn by him, How beautiful it was. We also came to know that he visited 25 countries to spread Gujarati literature with his Gujarati humor. He pretty much visited all the country where Gujarati people live. Afterall, જ્યાં જ્યાં વસે એક ગુજરાતી; ત્યાં ત્યાં સદાકાળ ગુજરાત !!

Very few people would have an idea that Gujarati movie named "Shahabuddin Rathod no Hasya Varghodo" was released on 10th Dec 2010 was written by him. He has also played a small role in the movie. This is also a fact that approx 70 percent of the shooting is done in Thangadh, Devsar, Rupavadi etc.. nearby villages.

We requested his autograph for my memory and he gave us his photograph with an autograph and also gave me a priceless gift, a book written by him "Ame Mahefil Jamavi Che" !! We took a nice family picture with him.

@Aashiyana, Thangadh, Gujarat

શાહબુદ્દીન રાઠોડ વિશે એટલું જ કહેવુ છે કે ગુજરાતી ભાષા માં કોઇ હાસ્યકાર નથી થયુ જેમની હ્યુમર આટલી ઉંચી હોય. એમને મળવાનું જે સૌભાગ્ય મને પ્રાપ્ત થયુ છે તે માટે હું પોતાને ખુબ જ ખુશ નસીબ ગણું છું !

💕 LisAnk-Aarav,
Inspiration With Ankit