My brother had come home after six months from the UK, and the mood at home was euphoric. At around 10.00 that night, there was a knock at the door and he answered it. Curious to know who it was at the odd hour, anna and I joined him. An old man, with a white beard covering most part of his countenance, stood before us. He had the familiar khakee coat on and as we looked beyond, we saw an auto rickshaw perched in front of our home. For a moment I thought it was an auto driver seeking directions; until he uttered that simple four lettered word, “File”. No sooner had he said that, than everything came rushing back to my brother as he immediately identified the old man to be the auto driver who had driven him home from the airport.
As we watched in bewilderment, the elderly man led us to his auto and produced a file. The file. The navy blue case which had all the important papers in it. Marks cards, degree certificates, work experience certificates, everything! It was then that we realized that it had been “LOST” all the while.
Our messiah unfolded the events of the day to us as we continued to watch in disbelief. My brother had been his first customer for the day and he had picked him up at the airport. Sometime in the evening, a commuter had found the file sitting innocently in the back seat and had mentioned it to him. The previous passengers had perhaps assumed that it belonged to the driver and had not bothered to bring it up. When this man handed him the file while alighting at his destination, the old man was worried. It was 7.00 in the evening and he had had several customers since daylight. There was no way he could establish who it belonged to. His conscience did not permit him to discard it either. It might mean a lot to someone, he felt, and he was right.
Illiterate that he was, he took the file to a bunch of lads chit-chatting nearby. He explained the situation to them and asked them to find the address from the papers. They flipped through the certificates and finally in one of the papers they found the address and told the old man that it belonged to someone from “Rajajinagar, 1st Block”. They also told him, it looked like it was a doctor’s. Now it was clear to the old man that it belonged to his first customer, the young man who he had ferried home from the airport. He did not need the postal address to return it to its rightful owner anymore; he had been there in the morning and could get to the house comfortably. And so, here he was.
He handed it over to my brother and asked him to check if everything was in place. My brother did not find the need to do that, after encountering such honest behaviour from the man. However, he quickly scanned the contents at the old man's insistence and as expected, found everything intact. We thanked him profusely for his kindness and he told us modestly that we had only to thank God for it. He was a moulvi in a mosque and asked us to visit the shrine sometime.
He mentioned having small kids at home and we gave him some chocolates to take home for the children.
A couple of hundred rupee notes can in no way measure up to a gesture and deed like this, but we had to show our gratitude in some way.
As he bade us goodbye and went his way, we stood there, dumbstruck. We shuddered to think what it would have been like, had we discovered that it was lost, before it was found! It would have taken my brother quite some time to even determine where it was lost. Even if he did, how could we track it down? A complaint at the local police station remains just that. Nothing is ever recovered.
When I look back, I cannot help but conclude that some incidents are beyond reasoning. Why did my brother have to forget that precious file in the auto? Why did he have to take the pious old man's auto that day? Had he taken another, would he have still got the lost property back? Did the old man, in all his innocence have any idea, what those piece of papers meant to my brother? I can go on and on about the endless possibilities. But the point is, did all this happen for a purpose? To be grateful to God? To re-establish our lost faith in the goodness of mankind? Maybe.
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3 comments:
Strange you should say that. I started this post with the intention of writing something in general about auto drivers, with a jist of that story tucked in somewhere. That I got carried away with the story is there for all to see... :-)That apart; I haven't had too many problems with auto drivers in Bangalore. In fact most of them have been reasonable and honest. (Now, I do not know if that has anything to do with my poor road sense) So when I do write about them, you know what to expect!!
Hi Gowri. Awesome post. Awesome guy too! Funny thing is, a similar thing happened in our life about 20 years ago. Though we knew immediately that the suitcase was missing and I went in circles trying to find that auto..we never got the suitcase back! There was gloom in the house for days on end! My mom is no more now and just to proudly say "its my mom's" and gift it to my daughter, I wish the auto guy would have returned the suitcase!
Thanks Ravi and isn't it always the case with lost and misplaced stuff? You never find it when you are looking desperately for it and it makes a grand entry from nowhere when you least expect it. Life is such, always catching you unawares!
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