A Few Pinches of Shame!!

The extraordinary follows me when I travel, I guess( which is why I stay in the room most of the time!!). Today I was traveling by bus when it came knocking again. I was on the phone when the conductor came to my seat to give me my ticket. I fished the wallet out of my pocket and took out fifty bucks. The note slipped off my hand and landed on the seat beside me. The guy beside made a motion to pick it as finished up my call and then I waited......Well? Why was he not giving it back?? I thanked him and asked for the money to which he astonishingly replied that it was his. Now he had taken it in front of my eyes and he had the guts to claim it as his. Anger was my first reaction and in my best terse voice I asked him to return it. He said that it was his and that he had taken it out of his pocket. I was perplexed. Then I started a slow burn wherein I was losing my temper and tried to snatch it off him. Then this sudden attack of ...well call it pity or the sheer stupidity or whatever I let go and told if he really needed it he could keep it. I just wanted him to own up to his theft. He didn't. After a while I started to talk to him. His name was.........(nope, no names...we look for religion in names), a carpenter by profession. And I , in my most polite manner ,must have asked him at least a dozen to own up without fear of retribution. The one hour journey ended with his denial...." I am not that sort of a man". The shame I felt, not for myself but for him, at that moment is indescribable. Fresh out of a Group Discussion on Gandhian values my "moral index" was high and shame made me cringe. Compulsive lying for fifty bucks!! He could have had that fifty bucks even if he had been truthful to me and yet he wanted to live a lie. In retrospect, given another chance maybe I would given him a resounding slap and dragged him the police or pried it out of his fingers. But somehow what I did felt right then. Right or wrong..I do not know.

Back in the campus...I heard that students are being suspended for sexual harassment. Twenty years of education. Years together in college and it comes down to this!! I am blaming neither party involved nor am I passing judgement on which side is correct in its actions. The issue and the way it has unfolded(through hearsay) are repugnant. When the "educated " youth of a premier institute, be it a boy or a girl, get down to this sort of behaviour I can but bow my head in shame. Is this the precedent we want to set of our juniors? Is this what it should come down to?

Yeh Dil Maange More!!!

There are times when i desperately wish I had a digicam which I can carry around to capture on tape some of those timeless moments that pass me by. Memory autosaves I guess, but sometimes the joy is in sharing the moment with others.

One such moment passed me by the other day. I was on the Tamil Nadu Express on my way to Delhi from Chennai. So as we neared Delhi a group of small kids (a lot like Salim and jamal from Slumdog Millionaire). Torn clothes, pencilled in moustaches, bright eyed, sharp toungued and wonderful voices singing to the beat of a couple of couple of stones.

There were three of them, a couple were around 8 and the youngest must have been around 5. The little imp was a lively customer. He went around collecting money while the others doled out the music. So the kid reached my seat and I sent him off with a shake of my head. He gave me a baleful look and seeing no returns set off to a young couple who sat beside me. He began a very determined appeal for money. The guy resisted and shooed him off in three languages(Hindi, English and Telugu) but the lil' guy wouldn't yield. Then the lil' guy got really excited about something and was doing some feverish pointing. The man's resistance collapsed and he took out his wallet and took out ten bucks and handed it to the boy.

The boy pushed away the money and pointed again. Our eyes turned as one to where he was pointing to. Hanging inside a polythene bag inside was a bottle of Pepsi. The little chap had somehow seen it and now he was determined to get his hands on that. The couple looked at each in shock. The boy was literally pleading now. His companions had moved on the next compartment and he was desperate to join them. He took out from his torn bag another half full bottle of pepsi and pointed it to the man as if the guy were hard of understanding and couldn't get the lillte guy's message. The man looked helpless. He turned to his wife who looked out the window wanting no part of this little tirade.

He finally gave in and handed the boy the Pepsi. The boy gave out the most resounding shout...Yeah...PEPSI!!!..... and scampered to join the others leaving us wide-eyed and open-mouthed...

Never have I seen a better ad for Pepsi.....Ah....How i wish i had a digicam...My words can never do justice to that scene....