“Cheats don’t think cheating is wrong until they get cheated back.” This quote I came across has a connection with an incident from the past.
My family and I were in a first-class compartment on a train bound for Delhi. As the train chugged along, we were in need of tea. I could hear the vendor selling tea in the nearby compartment. I rummaged through my purse for smaller denomination cash only to find a torn ₹500 note glaring at me. Somehow I could not exchange the note in any other place as it was damaged. The tea vendor knocked at our cabin. I asked him if he could give me change for the ₹500.
He eagerly reached for the note and shoved it into his pocket, nodding a big yes. He promised to give the change after visiting a few other compartments as he did not have the change just then. I was relieved that he did not take notice of the bad condition of the note. He passed us some hot tea and quickly moved on to the next compartment.
I forgot all about the money until another snack vendor knocked at our cabin. This about half an hour later after we finished having tea. I asked him about the tea vendor and the money he took to give us change. He looked at us quizzically and replied that he was the first vendor serving the compartment. We were taken aback and asked for the tea vendor’s whereabouts from our adjacent compartments only to find that he had taken money from other passengers also. One of them said that he had seen a man resembling our description getting down from the train when it had slowed down.
Well! That was the last time we could set our eyes on that old ₹500 note. This incident happened a few decades ago and it still lingers in my memory. Whenever my mind wanders to this incident, I begin to strongly introspect.
In the first place, the action of giving a torn note to the vendor in exchange for some fresh cash was wrong on my part. How can I feel bad about the whole episode of me getting cheated if I had committed the same mistake of cheating him? In short, the action by me actually boomeranged.
“In your mind, you are cheating somebody, but in reality you are cheating yourself.”
How true!
priyasri_m_1976@yahoo.com
