Category: Whimsy

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Love in Tokyo

Love in Tokyo

Friends are horrible people, don’t you think so? The fewer friends you have, the happier you will be. Take my word for it. I know. I am so so unfortunate to have a large number of friends. They say they wish me well, and therefore they have to be frank. The fact is they are not just frank, they are brutally frank. It is they who puncture my ego the most. On the other hand, my greatest victories have been gifted to me by those I consider my detractors, if not my enemies. .

Let me share with you what happened a few years back. I had gone on a business trip to Beijing. Luckily, I was able to negotiate a full day’s stopover in Japan, which I had never visited earlier. I was put up in an hotel at the Narita airport, and I decided to venture out to Tokyo as I had the whole day to myself. On the advice of the concierge, I decided to take the train to downtown Tokyo, rather than an expensive taxi.

At the train station, however, I was totally bewildered. I could not make out how to buy a ticket as I saw no booking office. I could neither understand the language, nor could I make out the value of the currency notes. I requested help from those passing by, but no one understood English.

I must have looked quite lost, because an attractive girl approached me, bowed low and introduced herself. In broken English, she told me to use the ticket machine, and rapidly explained how to use it. She said she had to hurry; otherwise she would miss her train. Somewhat shyly she explained that she was going to meet her boy friend. She turned and ran away, even before I could thank her.

I now addressed the ticket machine. The staccato instructions given by the girl proved useless and I could not coax a ticket out of the machine. I stood there helplessly, defeated by the Japanese, their language, their machines and their currency.

Suddenly, the same girl came rushing out of the station gate. She said she had missed her train, and that the next one was not due for another seven minutes. She had come back to make certain that I had got my ticket. She made me put money in the machine and punch some buttons, till a ticket popped out. I took the ticket and my change. She gave me the most beatific smile and hurried off, because she said she did not want to miss her train again.

On the train to Tokyo, I glanced at myself in a mirror. With the silver in my hair, I looked handsome and quite distinguished. It gave me a nice warm feeling to think that a young beautiful girl, on the way to meet her beau, had found me attractive enough to come back a second time to help. It might not count as a conquest, but it was also nothing to sneer at. I must have been smiling to myself, because many Japanese on the train smiled back. Even in the stores in Tokyo, other shoppers returned my smile.

The day after I returned to Delhi, I shared impressions of my foreign visit with my colleagues in office. I especially wanted to impress the new executive, the cute one who always wore high-heels. With a smug smile, I shared the pleasant memory of the girl at Narita station. I wasn’t gloating, but yes, I definitely conveyed that I, more than my middle-aged friends, had retained a certain youthfulness and charm. I also looked pointedly at high-heels.

That is when this friend of mine piped up. He said, “Oh the Japanese are such a polite people. The girl would have come back to help someone even a lot uglier than you.” Everyone burst out laughing; and high-heels laughed loudest.

Did I not tell you that it is one’s friends who deflate your ego the most? I concede that this guy knows a lot about Japan, but could he not control his urge to show off his knowledge about that country? At least he could have chosen his words with greater circumspection. Could he not have said that the girl would have come back, even for someone less handsome than me?

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Elephants and Snails

‎‏Many areas of Bihar are prone to annual inundation, with the floods bringing misery to hundreds of thousands of people. When the river waters recede in October, they leave behind diseases and collapsing houses. They also leave behind a rich layer of topsoil that is ready to be sown for a bountiful rabi crop. Madhepura, where I was posted as sub-divisional police chief in the early 1970s, was a typical area of the Kosi River belt. Large parts of the subdivision were flooded each year and pools of stagnant water stayed till the next summer; so, not all places were accessible by jeep. My work required extensive touring and I frequently travelled by boat or bicycle or on foot. Occasionally, it was possible to hire or borrow a rich landlord’s elephant, which was the best all-purpose vehicle for that terrain.
 

Once on a visit to Alamnagar, a chronically waterlogged area, I was able to hire an elephant. Riding the majestic animal, the SHO of Alamnagar and I visited several villages in flooded areas, although there were no paths and little dry ground. While returning, we came across a solitary thatched hut, precariously surrounded by water. Besides the damp and rotting vegetation, snails with dirty black shells clung to the sides of the hut and to mouldy jute plants poking out of the water. And near the hut sat an emaciated woman, bent with old age, holding a rusted knife and a misshapen aluminium pan. She had a pile of snails by her side and, as I watched, she scraped out the flesh of a snail into the pan and threw the shell away. She then picked up another snail and started scraping, all the while staring at me defiantly. From my lofty seat on the elephant, I stared back, disgusted by the slimy mess of snail flesh in her pan.

 After we had gone almost fifty yards, and I thought we were out of earshot, I asked the SHO incredulously whether it was common for people in that area to eat snails. I cannot imagine how, but the old woman heard my question and started shouting. I barely understood the torrent of words, but I could still make out that she was cursing me and condemning me to eternal damnation. She screamed that no misbegotten rich scoundrels should begrudge her a meal of a few snails. As our elephant plodded on and her voice receded, I heard her taunt: ‘How can you ride an elephant so arrogantly while I am starving?’ Feeling chastened, the SHO and I returned to Alamnagar in complete silence.
 
That was almost fifty years ago, and I should have long forgotten the incident. But even today, I avoid driving past a temple in my neighbourhood where a frail old woman sits, begging for alms from passersby. Each time I see her, the mocking words of the Alamnagar woman ring in my ears: “How can you ride an elephant so arrogantly while I am starving?”
(Tribune – January 11, 2024)
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Life Lessons in a Lift

Living in a condominium is a valuable experience and it provides opportunities to deal with crisis situations. One learns important life lessons and, if one is receptive enough, there are significant management takeaways too. Recently, I encountered a classic case of management by shared responsibility and decision-making by delay. I also learnt a useful lesson in problem-solving through out-of-the-box thinking.

The crisis was caused by the sudden drop in temperatures in late November when winter finally decided to arrive. Quite unsuspectingly, I entered the lift one day and was stunned by a blast of cold air on my large forehead. To say that I was miffed would be an understatement. I was annoyed, irritated and chafed. But the cold breeze continued to freeze my head as the lift descended from the 20th to the ground floor. I could not turn off the lift fan because the control panel was locked behind a steel panel. So, I upbraided the watchman, who doubles as the liftman, and told him to switch the fan off. But he refused, declaring that he had no instructions to do so.

I then marched to the maintenance office, where a prissy young woman sits behind her desk to record complaints. I made my annoyance known in no uncertain terms and demanded that all lift fans be switched off. “Oh, but we can’t do that, sir. We have no orders,” she said. “So, get your blooming orders,” I replied curtly. But she did not budge. “The orders have to come from the RWA — the Residents’ Welfare Association.”

Realising that the woman was but an underling, I decided to take up the matter with the secretary general of the RWA. Despite the impressive designation, he, too, refused to take any decision, bold or otherwise. “I think it would be advisable to have a board meeting on this matter,” he muttered. I insisted that no one needed fans in winter. That blighter pointedly looked at my bald head and smirked, “Well some might not.” The man will never know how close he came to being murdered.

I checked with the secretary general every day thereafter. He reluctantly informed me that the RWA Board had decided to call a general body meeting to take a decision and that might take a month or more. I begrudged my helplessness and each time I entered the lift, I chafed and fumed and raged because of the blast of cold air on my pate.

The problem was solved last week when I was in the lift and a snot-nosed boy got in on the 10th floor. He prised open the steel cover of the control panel with a coin and switched the fan off. When we reached the ground floor, he switched it back on! Now, if the powers that be cannot decide whether to switch the fan off in freezing January or to switch it on in sweltering June, I am not the least bit concerned. You see, I now always carry a coin in my pocket!

(Tribune – 27/12/2023)

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The Timeless Timepiece

  • Attending international conferences in foreign countries sounds more attractive than it actually is. The long flights, packed meeting schedules and formal receptions leave no time for seeing the sights, and the monotonously similar hotel rooms make one conference seem like any other. After just a few weeks, it is sometimes difficult to even remember which city one had visited. But there is a small timepiece that sits on my study table, reminding me with every tick-tock of one trip that was different.

It was about fifteen years back that I visited Tokyo to attend a conference. The schedule was depressingly hectic, so I decided to skip one session to visit the famed Electric City, which has hundreds of shops selling a mindboggling range of electronic goods. On an impulse, I decided to buy an iPod, that small electronic device which could store and play music. A helpful salesgirl showed me a range of products. Even though she did not know English and I was not conversant in Japanese, through giggles and gestures, she helped me select an iPod of 4-GB capacity from among several choices. I then went to the cash counter and paid for it. The salesgirl handed over the iPod in a carry bag and I proceeded to the exit of the store. Before I stepped out, I paused to admire my purchase, but then I saw that the iPod given to me was a 1-GB model and not the 4-GB version that I had paid for. I returned to the counter and through gestures explained the mistake to the salesgirl.

I had expected her to apologise and give me the product I had purchased. I was, however, totally unprepared for her reaction. She blanched and seemed to be in a state of shock! She started babbling rapidly in Japanese and sobbing at the same time. She then fled from the counter and returned with her supervisor, both of whom kept explaining something incoherently. I assumed that they were apologising and kept assuring them that it was okay. But the obviously unhappy supervisor then fetched the store manager, who knew a bit of English. The latter volubly apologised in a flood of Japanese and broken English. I tried to make light of it, saying that anyone could have made this simple mistake. But the salesgirl, her supervisor and the manager stood before me in obvious distress and bowed repeatedly. Quite at a loss, I bowed back several times. The manager insisted on giving me the iPod free of cost. I was equally adamant that I would pay for it. Ultimately, we compromised, and the manager gifted me a small clock to atone for their slip-up.

That iPod is now long gone, lost in the folds of time and technological obsolescence. But the small timepiece still ticks away on my study table to remind me of a foreign visit that was made special by Japanese courtesy and meticulousness.

(The Tribune – 13/12/23)

 

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The Life Saving Villain

Devout Hindus all over the country offer ‘jal’ (water) at Shiva temples, particularly in the monsoon month of Sawan. In the early 1970’s, the practice of carrying Gangajal for long distances was, however, peculiar to Bihar. The main Kanwar Yatra was performed by carrying water from the river Ganga at Sultanganj, in Bhagalpur district, to Baidyanath Dham temple in Deoghar, a hundred kilometres away. As part of my training as a police officer, I was deputed to Sultanganj to handle arrangements for the fortnight-long yatra. The road snaking through the town had to be kept clear for traffic, crowds at the ghats had to be kept moving; and drowning mishaps were to be prevented. These were not easy tasks with just the handful of constables available and willy nilly I spent a lot of time at the ghats.

One afternoon, I saw a bundle of clothes floating past the ghat steps and, while I watched, a hand waved from that bundle. I rushed into the river fully clothed, without even taking my boots off. I grabbed the bundle and dragged it ashore, only to discover that there was an old woman swaddled in those clothes. I stretched the supine form on the ground and carried out resuscitation exercises in the best fashion as prescribed by the St. John Ambulance Association and the Royal Life Saving Society. Fortunately, I did not need to do any of that mouth-to-mouth stuff as the old woman sputtered to consciousness soon enough and sat up with surprising energy.

By then, a goodly crowd of a hundred or more onlookers had gathered and a collective cheer went up when the woman came to life. Cries of ‘Bol Bam’ and ‘Har Har Mahadev’ rent the air. I felt every inch a hero, even as I presented a sorry sight, with water dripping from my sodden uniform and my waterlogged boots squirting Gangajal with every step. But I was ever so happy that I had saved a human life and I fleetingly prayed to Lord Shiva to get me a medal awarded for it.   

We learnt later that the old woman had fallen into the river more than ten kilometres upstream from Sultanganj. The air trapped in her clothes provided sufficient buoyancy to prevent her from drowning and she had been floating along serenely, confident that she was on her way to meet her Maker. Quite rudely, I had disrupted her heavenward journey. Instead of being grateful, the woman was understandably angry, and she cursed me for saving her life. She kept shouting obscenities for a long time because the old crone believed that Ganga Maiyya herself had come to conduct her to Baikunth Dham. Furthermore, she declared that she would never attain salvation because she had been now defiled by the touch of a paraya mard – a stranger – that too one belonging to the low caste of the police. The volley of spells and curses hurled by her totally unnerved the life-saving hero within me. I prayed to Lord Shiva to protect me from evil and, if He were so inclined, keep the medal for Himself in exchange!

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Of Hunting Accidents, Unresolved Issues & Old Age

In school, I always played in the full-back position on the hockey team. So, I never got an opportunity to score a goal – something that I desperately yearned for. On one occasion, I begged our team captain to let me play as a forward – at least for part of one inconsequential match. He reluctantly agreed – and I was thrilled! Oh, that glorious feeling of running to get ‘unmarked’, receiving a long pass, dribbling past the last defender, and then scoring a goal. But even as I got to shoot at the goal a few times, the burly goalkeeper blocked every attempt. The two teams remained goalless, till almost the final whistle when I got a pass right in front of the goal. I was about to realise my lifelong dream. The goalie came charging out, even as I ran at full speed and flicked the ball towards the goal. Other players later said that the very earth seemed to shake when the goalkeeper and I collided.

I had no recollection of what happened after that, because the keeper and I both fell unconscious. We were taken to the hospital, where I received 10 stitches on my eyebrow and the goalkeeper got as many on his head. When I came to, I eagerly enquired, “Was it a goal?” Surprisingly, no one seemed to know. Everyone was concerned about the fallen gladiators and not one of the players had cared to note whether I had scored a goal.

The 10 stitches on my brow left an ugly scar, which I carry to this day – more than 60 years on. I used to look at this scar when I shaved and, every morning, I wondered whether I had scored that goal or not. And I remained convinced that there could be nothing worse than having an unresolved issue in one’s old age. Till I had that hunting accident last year.

But let me explain. We old people are not stupid, and that is why we do not refer to our shenanigans and indiscretions as foolish actions. We call them ‘hunting accidents’. Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, chivalry is not altogether dead. If a lady shrieks or screams, it behoves a gentleman to come to her succour and aid, even if the said lady is his wife. Whether the little woman screamed or she shrieked that afternoon was, however, of only academic interest – jolted as I was to total wakefulness from the absolute catalepsy of my afternoon siesta. I heard the shriek again from the general direction of the kitchen and I, the ever gallant husband, sprang to defend the dear wife.

I rushed to the kitchen where the little woman stood in a corner, frozen with fear. She looked the classic damsel in distress, straight out of some illustrated fairytale book. The fire-breathing dragon that had scared her was a medium-sized lizard sitting on the floor, moving its head from the left to right. Then again left to right. Menacingly. On seeing that wild reptile, the dormant knight within me came to life. With great alacrity I seized a lance-like broom lying nearby and lunged at that monster with a savage war cry. Sadly, as I pounced, the ground slipped away from under my feet, and I landed on the floor with all the 90 kilogrammes that I have at my command. But even as I fell, I managed a mighty swipe at the dangerous reptile.

The next thing that I remember was my wife bending solicitously over me, trying to wake me up. “Did I manage to kill the blighter?” I asked. The little woman looked nonplussed. “Oh, you must have. I think it scuttled away behind that shelf. But look, there is the tail!” Now, I love my wife dearly, but I will never forgive her for failing to observe whether I had killed the lizard or not. To point to a wriggling tail on the kitchen floor and inveigle me into believing that the ferocious reptile had been killed was simply not acceptable. I needed conclusive proof; like seeing the villain lying dead. I would certainly not have mounted the squished carcass of the reptile as a trophy, but I was equally averse to passing off a thin strand of something as proof of a ‘kill’. However, the corpse was conspicuous by its absence and all that I could see was a frantically wriggling tail, a few inches from my nose.

I sat up gingerly, and then with a scream collapsed to the floor. There was an excruciating pain in my ribs, my left knee, and my right hand! A few X-rays in the neighbourhood hospital confirmed that old men are fragile commodities. We returned home with a plaster cast on my hand, a taped-up chest, and a bandaged knee. Over the past few months, the plaster cast, the tape and the bandages have gone away, but the pain in my fingers remains.

Now, when I shave in the mornings, I see the scar on my brow, and I wonder whether I had indeed scored that goal. Then I feel the pain in the fingers with which I grip the razor, and I wonder if I had indeed killed that lizard. And I realise that having two unresolved issues in one’s old age is worse than having just one.

 

(The Week Magazine – March 25,2024)

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Parenting Failures

A peculiar aspect of living in a high-rise condominium is that one never really gets to know all of one’s fellow residents. Not even their names. Thus, in our condominium, I am called ‘Uncle’ by some and addressed as ‘Bhai Sahib’ by others. The children annoyingly call me ‘Baba’ or ‘Dada’. They crawl all over the place, getting underfoot on skates, on bicycles and while playing cricket. I encounter them everywhere — in the garden, in the lift and in the walking area. I see the kids going to school, sullenly trudging behind parents, who carry their bulging schoolbags.

Just the other day, a teenaged girl approached me while I was waiting for the lift. She asked me the time, so I pointed at the clock hanging on the wall. She asked me the time again. ‘The clock is right there, my dear,’ I said. She looked at the clock and said primly, ‘I can’t tell the time from that round thing. I am used to only digital devices.’

Another day, I observed a young boy who was riding a bicycle with flat tyres. I told him that they needed to be inflated. He seemed to have no idea what I was talking about. And nor did his father, who came by a bit later. He thanked me for noticing the flat tyres and promised to buy new ones. When I told him that he only needed to pump air into them, he asked, ‘Uncle, how much psi pressure is recommended?’ I told him that it was clearly written, ‘Inflate hard’. ‘Ah, so it’s not my son’s fault,’ the father said. He added proudly and irrelevantly, ‘My son is among the youngest code writers in his school.’

When my elder daughter was about eight, her school uniform included a necktie, and I taught her how to knot one. Her mother also trained her to dress herself and tie her shoelaces. I assumed that all parents similarly teach their children. But no! In our condominium, I find quite a few children running around with their laces undone. Whenever I stop a kid to prevent him from tripping, he asks me to tie the laces for him! I once saw a woman doing up the laces of her young son; I suggested that she teach the brat to tie them himself. The mother just shrugged and said: ‘Oh, they have to learn so much in school, as it is.’

I am ashamed that my wife and I are failures as parents, and we did not bring up our daughters properly. I mean they knew enough to come in out of the rain, and they could tell the time and change a fused lightbulb, if needed. They carried their own schoolbags and sharpened their own pencils. But they could never programme a computer. They still can’t repair an iPhone. As children, they never mastered the survival skill of downloading an app. Maybe, it is because my wife and I are simple country bumpkins, and we never knew the important things that children needed to be taught.

 

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The Storm Over a Cup of Tea

As Sub-Divisional Police Officer of Madhepura in north Bihar in 1974, I was required to frequently visit police stations in my area. I reached one of these, Kishanganj, on a wintry evening. I was received by SHO Dhaneshwar Singh and the cook-cum-chowkidar of the dak bungalow in which I was to stay. I directed the cook to serve dinner at nine and bring bed tea at seven the next morning. I then settled down to discuss matters relating to the thana with the SHO.

Sub-Inspector Singh started with a request: “Please, sir, you should always ask for chai, never for bed tea. We had a riot here last year, involving villagers of Kishanganj and members of a baraat that had come from Patna. The baraat was put up in a dharamshala, and the bride’s relatives attended to every wish of the guests. The father and brother of the bride took it upon themselves to look after the groom.”

The SHO then told me that despite the good arrangements made by the bride’s family, a quarrel broke out between the hosts and the guests the next morning, with the two groups attacking each other with sticks and stones. In the brawl, many persons were injured. The Sub-Inspector reached the spot along with a few constables and separated the warring groups, but both sides continued shouting and screaming. The bride’s family accused the groom’s kin of insulting them, while the baraatis maintained that they had never uttered an impolite word. The bride’s father declared that he could not bring himself to even repeat the offensive demand made by the groom. It was then discovered that the groom was missing, and his family accused the girl’s relatives of kidnapping him.

To defuse the tension, finding the groom was the first priority. After a brief search, he was found hiding in a muddy pond nearby. With great difficulty, the Sub-Inspector got both parties to talk, and it was learnt that the father of the bride flew into a rage when the groom asked him to send his daughter to his room. The father alleged that the boy had insisted several times that the girl be sent to him, even though the wedding was to take place only in the evening. The groom stoutly denied that he had ever made any such demand.

“What does all this have to do with my asking for bed tea?” I said.

“That is just the point, sir,” said the SHO. “The boy never demanded that the bride should be sent to his room. All that the city-bred groom had said was ‘Bed tea lao’, and when the hosts did not oblige, he kept repeating, ‘Bed tea lao! Bed tea lao!’ The misunderstanding arose because the girl’s father thought that the boy was saying ‘Beti lao, beti lao!’ That is why, sir, I urge you to only ask for chai when you visit small towns.”

 

(The Tribune – August 17, 2023)

 

 

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Haven’t Heard the Last of It

“You are going deaf!” asserted my wife, apropos of nothing. “Eh? What did you say?” I enquired absent-mindedly. “Oh, for God’s sake!” she said, throwing up her hands melodramatically. “I ask for the third time — do you or don’t you want coffee? You really are deaf!”

“Oh no, dear!” I said, “I’m not deaf. It is just that sometimes I am preoccupied with matters that you would not understand.”

“Stupid old man,” she mumbled, thinking that I would not hear her.

In fact, I am not deaf, and there is nothing wrong with my hearing — at least most of the time there isn’t. I can hear the bells of the neighbourhood temple for the morning aarti. My beauty sleep is equally disturbed by the azan from the mosque. The blaring horns of school buses never cease. I can always hear the sirens of ambulances and police vehicles that add a note of urgency to the day. Nevertheless, like many of my friends, I do not hear the doorbell sometimes, or I ignore the telephone till it tring-trings itself to sullen silence. The missus tries to use these lapses as evidence of my deafness, but I cleverly deflect the accusation by pointing out that I was listening to music through my Air Pods. I plead innocence by also claiming that I can well hear the raucous crows on the terrace, the piercing cry of the vegetable vendor, as also the faraway diesel generator set.

Television anchors were the ones who discovered first that I have hearing issues. So, instead of using the sedate tone of Salma Sultan, they adopted the excited style of Navjot Sidhu for reading the news. They instigated the participants in discussion programmes to outshout the most aggressive of sellers in any fish market. And by Jove, they succeeded! It has now truly become a free-for-all. Even the characters in soap operas, so keenly watched by my wife, have started yelling. I presume they do so to ensure that I can hear them.

Besides the guys on television, the neighbourhood aunties have come to my rescue, too. They always gather by turn in someone’s home and chant complicated mantras to appease various gods. These ‘Bajrangi ammas’, as some youngsters call them, have now started using a loudspeaker for my benefit. Children scream expressly to disturb my siesta. The plumber, mason, carpenter and even the electrician of our condo create a ruckus whenever they can, patently to reassure me that I am not hard of hearing. I am indeed blessed! The whole universe has conspired to prove my wife wrong about my minor hearing problem. My only wish now is to somehow make her speak louder when she talks to me!

 

(Published in The Tribune on 28/04/2023

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Thievery for Breakfast

When I was a young Assistant Superintendent of Police in Bhagalpur in the early ‘70s, life was tough and unpredictable. Working hours were long and mealtimes irregular. I seldom knew when I would return home for lunch or dinner; or even to sleep. The only constant in a life full of the hurly and burly was the delicious breakfast that my orderly, Islam, cooked for me. Every morning, he presented four lightly buttered toasts, one grilled tomato and a glorious three-egg omelette stuffed with onion, a hint of ginger and a whole load of cheese! Islam’s Special Cheese Omelette was guaranteed to provide sustenance for many hours, and I was thankful for it more than once when I got no food during the rest of the day.

While Islam loved to cook and I loved to eat, I really could not afford to eat like a prince on a pauper’s pay. Reluctantly, I directed Islam one day to cut out the expensive cheese from my breakfast. Next morning, I braced myself to face a cheese-less omelette. But no, the cheese omelette was there in all its glory!

“Why haven’t you stopped stuffing cheese in my omelette? You know that cheese is expensive!”
Islam was all innocence and light. “But Sir, I bought four tins because of the erratic supply. Surely, you don’t want me to throw them away?”

So I relished Islam’s cheese omelettes for a couple of months more. Finally, his stock of cheese ran out and I morosely ate cheese-less omelettes for some days. And then suddenly, after many tasteless breakfasts, Islam presented the most wonderful cheese omelette – not with Amul processed cheese but stuffed with the delicious cheddar that could only be Kraft’s! I ate with unbounded joy! After I finished breakfast, I knew I would have to confront Islam about the cheese, because Kraft was far more expensive than Amul.

Islam had a facile explanation. “Sir, you never objected to cheese. You only objected to the cost. I bought this Kraft from the circuit house khansama, who usually purloins the provisions meant for visiting VIPs. He sells the Kraft cheese at a fraction of the price of Amul.” He gleefully added, “I have bought five tins!”

I was confronted by an ethical dilemma of gigantic proportions – Should I order Islam to return the cheese to the khansama or should I simply enjoy it? I knew that any SHO worth his salt could draw up a watertight FIR against the khansama for theft and against Islam for receiving stolen goods. I would be accused of abetting the crime, conspiring to steal, receiving stolen property, and destroying evidence. The choice was between the right course of action and the main course of breakfast. Islam saw me dithering, so he gave the clinching argument, “Huzoor gustakhi maaf ho, but the khansama will in any case pilfer and sell the provisions. If I don’t buy the cheese, someone else will. If you don’t eat it, someone else will.”

I hesitated no longer. “So, how many more tins of Kraft cheese is the khansama willing to sell?” I asked.

Published in The Tribune on 16/3/23 with some edits.