Making guests feel welcome in your home

1.What kind of behaviour should we avoid when guests come home ?

Many times our parents’ acquaintances come to visit them at home. Now-a-days, even if guests have arrived at home, children remain sitting on the sofa-sets and keep watching television. They are more interested in watching television than in welcoming the guests. Even though the guests are standing, the children remain seated on sofas and don’t even bother to get up and welcome them. The loud sound of the television creates disturbance to the parents and their guests while they are talking. For the same reason, sometimes the parents ask their children to switch off the television set or reduce its volume. In such situations sometimes the children answer back rudely to their parents!

2.How should our approach be towards our guests ?

In Sanskrit, there is a saying, “athithi devo bhava” which means guests are in the form of God! Hindu religion teaches us that God comes to our house in the form of guests! According to the teachings of our religion, we should respect our guests. We should welcome them and serve them with hospitality.

3.How to welcome our guests and serve them with hospitality ?

a. We should welcome our guests by immediately standing up and offering them our salutations !

b. We should not sit while our guests are standing.

c. We should offer them a seat to sit down.

d. We should sit down only after our guests are seated. Till then we should remain standing. This reflects our modesty and our respect towards them. We should offer water to our guest immediately, as they are usually tired since they come from outside!

e. We should behave with them with a lot of love and with cheerful countenance.

f. If our parents ask us to make tea, coffee, or any cold-drink for the guests, we should prepare it and bring it for them.

g. We should not create any disturbance while our parents and guests are talking, by changing the subject on which they are talking or by talking in-between and interfering.

h. We should stand up when guests stand to leave.

i. We should walk a few steps outside with our guests while they are leaving.

In this way, we should serve them with a lot of hospitality. By observing the saying “atithi devo bhava”, in day-to-day life, we should try and achieve happiness in our life!