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The author shares an incident that took place on a rainy day and which left her stunned. Read on!
Rain God’s fury knew no bounds that day. The entire 100 feet road was submerged in a heavy deluge of water. It was raining like cats and dogs. My cab dropped me at the Airtel showroom on the 100 feet road. The rain had no signs to abate so I decided to take an auto to my house. Everyday I used to cover that distance walking.
After several refusals, cold looks, exorbitant prices being quoted by the auto men, I finally found an angel. And I call him so because he already had a passenger in his auto and still he agreed to take me in and charged only Rs.20. I was already drenched. I muttered to myself, “What a good man! God is still there, good people with principles are still not a rare species”.
As I sat inside I grappled in my bag for my purse pondering if I would have any change. I did not want to be of any trouble to him or get more drenched looking for change in that heavy downpour. To my dismay I had a Rs. 500 note. I reached outside my house and before getting down handed him a Rs.500 note for a fare of Rs. 20. with an expression of immense guilt. I was almost ready to hear,“Madam…change illa ..please change kodi”. My ears and eyes seemed to defy what my mind said. As soon as I handed him the note waiting for it to be returned, in a fraction of a second I had the rest of the 480 Rs. in my hand.
Drenched in rain and drenched in the goodness of the auto-man, I just took the folded bundle of notes and shoved them in my bag purse and stepped out of the auto, all this while so thankful to him and for a moment I wanted to change my perception of the Bangalore autowalas.
I happily marched towards my house charged to narrate the story of the goodness of the autowala. Next morning, I got up and opened my purse for something and thought of opening the bundle of notes and keeping them in place properly. As I unfolded the bundle, I failed to feel the thickness of a hundred rupee note. It felt like a flimsy piece of paper. As I unfolded them completely and had a look, my head went into circles for a moment as the ever victorious, invincible, the Undertaker, on whose entry lights go off, seemed to smirk and mock at me.
Where was the our ‘father of the nation’? If it was “rupee” and a wrestler had to appear on the note then our Dara Singh is no less than Undertaker. The automan had cheated me. His innocent face flashed in front of my eyes. He had handed me fake notes, infact those notes cannot be called fake as well. It would mean looking down upon all the mafia who work day in and out to create those fake notes. That auto man’s children must have bagged them with some “bubble gum” and he gave them to me for free, to play.
This is an incident which happened last year, when it used to rain religiously in the evening. It appeared as if the sun worked nine to six and then handed over the evening shift to the rain God. Now it is the same time of year again. Rainy season is always that time of the year with which one can associate many such incidents which at that time felt like another mundane day but left an indelible impression and got imprinted on the canvas of our minds.
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