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This is a story of a poor but honest man.
We had gone to Darjelling during the summer holidays and took up a cottage on
rent for our stay. Our cook had gone with us because we could not do without
home cooked meals.
 Usually
all the shopping was done by our house-help who had accompanied us to our
holiday destination. But one early evening, my mother decided to do all the
vegetable shopping herself. She believed that he did not wait to check
out the really fresh items but bought randomly in a hurry and as a result,
brought back not so fresh veggies.
She got ready, took her favourite purse
with quite an amount of money thinking she could go to other shops too after
finishing at the vegetable market.
My mother asked our house-help to get a
rickshaw for her and on reaching the market, she asked the rickshaw wallah
to wait for her.
She took a coolie and did her shopping happily, choosing some of the
freshest green vegetables available there. At last her shopping completed.
She returned to the rickshaw and sat on it while the coolie transferred all
the purchases of the day onto the rickshaw.
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On reaching home, our house-help took all the
packets of vegetables inside and my mother quickly paid the rickshaw wallah and
got off, forgetting to collect her purse from the seat of the rickshaw. The
rickshaw wallah left soon after saluting my mother. All of us greeted my mother
and asked her about her evening of shopping with much delight. It was much later
in the evening, almost 9 PM when dinner was about to be announced that my mother
realised her purse was missing. She looked everywhere for it and suddenly
remembered that after paying the rickshaw man, she had kept the purse on the
seat before settling her sari and getting off the rickshaw. She had forgotten to
pick up her purse which contained a lot of cash since she was too tired to visit
other shops.
When father came to know about this, he said that it was too late to look for
the rickshaw puller. If mother had remembered about her purse on entering the
cottage, he could have sent the house-help to look for him. We all decided that it
was best to forget about it. Mother felt sad and guilty while sitting for
dinner. |
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We were just about to begin eating when the door bell rang. Our
house-help opened
the door and called my mother to see who it was. Wonder of wonders, it was the
poor old bedraggled rickshaw wallah standing at our entrance with a big
smile on his weather - beaten face. He had mummy's purse in his hand. He told
her he had gone too far before discovering her purse, that is why he came so
late. Could he be forgiven for that? |
He knew she must be worried. My mom was taken aback by this poor man's honesty
when on opening her purse, she found all the notes intact. She wanted to reward
the old man but he smiled and said, "Memsaab, I'm poor but not a thief"
and went away smiling broadly.
All of us realized that there was still honesty and goodness in this
world!
Contributed By:
Latika
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