Thursday, April 16, 2015

A single rupee or a crore, it is my money.

Whenever a bus conductor or a shopkeeper doesn't give me my change after buying something, an incident that happened few years ago always comes to my mind. I was traveling by bus and there was a boy seated next to me. He seemed very sad and I started conversing with him. His father who is a drunkard has abandoned them. To earn a living and and to take care of his two siblings, his mother had decided to send him to work in Chennai. It seems she too was working as a maid. He was hardly 14 years old. He had tears in his eyes when he told me this.

 All he had was a 100 rupee note his mother had given him. The fare for the ticket to Chennai was INR 56 at that time. The conductor gave him 40 rupees back and told him that he would give the 4 rupees later. The boy was very much anxious to get his money back. Each time somebody paid the conductor for a ticket, the boy would ask if he could get his 4 rupees back. The conductor was annoyed and yelled at the boy. This went on for sometime and I also felt that the conductor was arrogant.  I started an argument with the bus conductor. Finally it erupted into a verbal spat but luckily I got some support from other passengers and finally the conductor gave him the money. The boy was happy and I felt really good for what I did. It doesn't matter if it is just 4 rupees, it was the boy's money and it was a lot for him. If he hadn't told me his story,  I may not have fought with the conductor.

Yesterday at a bakery in Bangalore, I was given a 5 rupee biscuit packet as the guy at the bakery did not have change. I said, I need the change and not biscuits. He said, in that case, I should wait. I didn't have the time and I took the biscuit packet and left. At least the brand he gave was Britannia Good Day. I was bored today and I thought of visiting the bakery again and ordered the same what I ordered the previous day. And the guy asked me if I have INR 5, I said YES and gave him the biscuit packet he gave me the previous day. Boy! You should have seen his face. He picked himself up quickly and said, "No, sir! I cannot take it back from you. I can only take it from a distributor." Poor soul! I victimized him to my verbal diarrhea with a pinch of sarcasm and he took that packet back.

Having done that, I walked back home as if I just conquered the world. And in another similar incident, the guy at a medical shop near my home snatched the World I'd conquered earlier. I asked for a roll of surgical cotton and the shop-keeper said it is INR 20 and I gave him INR 20. What I got back was this cotton roll and 2 Vicks candies. I looked for the MRP on the roll and it was INR 18. I asked him for a receipt and he gave without the slightest hesitation. Well, I forgot for a moment that we live in India. He knows I am not going to a consumer court for this. 

This is the receipt he gave me

I started walking back thinking about buying Economic Times newspaper tomorrow morning for INR 4 when the actual price is INR 3.50 .No one really accepts 50 Paise coins anymore. And here is an article on Economic Times on the same.  If that is so, why ET should fix the price as INR 3.50? Irony just died a thousand deaths. Is it correct to withhold someone else's money or thrust upon him something that he doesn't want to buy? Is this right on our part to silently accept this? That said, ladies and gentlemen, I may not have a story like that boy on the bus, but it is my money, a single rupee or a crore, it is my money.