Those Twenty-seven Rupees
Ritu Bhatnagar
Covid-19 has brought about a big upheaval in everyone’s life. So much has changed during this period. The impact has been tremendous. None can claim that he has remained unscathed. Many old habits have changed. Mine too changed.
I always liked going up to the departmental store in the mall adjoining our housing society to shop for our household dailies.
My husband would often say, “I can order the goods online, why do you stress yourself everyday for this.”
But I would tell him, “Going to the shop has its own benefits, I get to see many other things which I may have missed in my shopping list. I also get to see what new products are available in the market. And apart from it, shopping is always a refreshing change for ladies!”
But due to this pandemic, going out for shopping stopped, shops were shut, markets remain closed, and we all were afraid of going to crowded places. I too stopped going out unless it was essential, and going to the shop was the last option. And with this came a significant change in one of my habits too – I learnt how to make on-line or digital payments. I found making payments via Paytm very convenient.
It was just two days before Janmashtami. Suddenly I realized that we all would be fasting on the day, celebrating the birthday of our beloved Lord Krishna. It is a practice in our family that we eat food made of kuttu flour instead of regular wheat flour. And there was no kuttu flour at home. That evening I went to buy kuttu flour from the small provision shop which had been opened by our housing society management for convenience of residents. I couldn’t get the kuttu flour in that shop but did buy some other small things. The bill amount was a mere twenty-seven rupees. I took out my mobile and made the payment via Paytm.
Oh! But what did I do…? Instead of making the payment to this shopkeeper I made the payment to some other number. After looking carefully, I realized that I had sent the amount to someone named Rohitram. I lost my money due to my carelessness! I was feeling very annoyed. I had to pay this shopkeeper for what I had purchased from him. Over and above that I didn’t know to whom I had transferred those twenty-seven rupees. I was fuming at my stupidity, feeling a bit irritated for the loss and fretting at the lankiness of my memory. However, much I tried to recall who this Rohitram was, I could not make a single guess. Although one thing was certain, I must have made a Paytm payment to him at some point in the past. That is why his name was appearing in my list and I had selected his number to make the payment by mistake. But still I was not able to recall a single thing about this Rohitram!
Anyway, what was done was done! The amount was not big, and this was a consolation for me. After finishing few more errands, I hurried back home. After coming home, I got busy preparing dinner, but from time to time my attention was drawn towards the question, “Who was this Rohitram, whose name was appearing in my Paytm list?” No matter how much I stressed my memory, I could not retrieve anything.
The next morning when I woke up, my brain had put aside this incident in some back-drawer and slowly I forgot about it as the day advanced. That evening my son expressed a wish to have some ice-cream for dessert that night. We both were taking a walk at that time and decided to go to the ice-cream vendors who would be standing with their carts just outside our society gates. We were about to reach a particular ice-cream vendor, when suddenly it popped up in my mind who the mysterious Rohitram was! Rohitram was the ice-cream vendor who used to sell Kwality Ice-cream. I had made purchases from him many times, and had made payments via Paytm. This was the reason his name featured on my mobile list.
Rohitram, a dark-complexioned young boy of 18-20 years, used to stand outside our housing society gate everyday with his ice cream cart. Although I did not remember his name, I was going to buy ice cream from him this time too. It had nothing to do with those twenty-seven rupees. I simply liked that boy who was about the same age as my son. Rohitram was a very well-mannered boy. Reaching his cart, my son asked for a particular ice-cream. Rohitram immediately recognized me since I had made many purchases from him.
Just to assure myself that my memory was not shunning me I simply asked him, “Your name is Rohitram, isn’t?”
He replied, “Yes.”
Hesitating a little and with rumpled up thoughts I asked him, “Did you receive a payment of twenty-seven rupees?”
He reacted immediately, “Yesterday?”
“Yes”, I said.
Rohitram said, “Didi, when I reached home yesterday after winding up my cart and sat down to make an account of the day’s sale, I found that I had received twenty-seven rupees from someone on Paytm. This didn’t add up with the sales made by me during the day. I realized that this amount was extra and therefore I immediately made a return payment to the number.”
I have to confess here that I was very surprised at what I had just heard. I hadn’t bothered to check my Paytm account, and therefore didn’t realize that I had already received back twenty-seven rupees.
I asked him in amazement, “You returned that money?” Rohitram replied casually, “Yes! That was not my money to keep, it was someone else’s, so how could I keep it?”
Then I narrated to him the entire episode of how that money landed up in his account. After listening to my story, he simply smiled and got busy taking out what my son had asked for.
Who says that there is a dearth of honesty and truthfulness in this harsh world? Who says that the new generation is selfish, ill-mannered, dishonest and irresponsible? Who says that poverty is in the root of all the evils?
All these notions are farfetched from reality and absurd. The bright future of society lies in the hands of such honest and truthful youngsters of Generation X, to which this dark, young boy Rohitram belonged. Although leading a hard and difficult life, cursed with poverty he was not lured by that extra money, a meager amount for me but a significant amount for him!
I bought the ice cream from him, not just what I had intended to buy, but a lot more, made the payment and returned home. But all the way back home that dark complexioned face kept floating before my eyes. He was the Krishna of this Janmashtami for me. I was feeling elated to have met him. My heart, full of happiness that my son would be having this Krishna as one of his compatriots in society on his journey in life, I hoped that society would give birth to many more such Krishnas to keep the beacon blazing!
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