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?