Rocking in the Free World

A trip to BTM layout to meet my friends and put band practise led to another situation worth documenting, to serve as a reminder that decent and polite behaviour is not a big deal, by the looks of it.

As I was walking towards my friend’s house, I was accosted by an entire group of people who claimed they were from Aurangabad, and their belongings were pilfered on their journey to south India. Armed in tow with a full family of wife and kids, their plight seemed convincing, and the Good Karma glutton that I am, I took out everything in my pocket (sixty bucks or so) and gave it to them.

Luckily, as it turns out later, I needed an ATM visit to pack up my wallet further.

At the same time as I was listening to their tale, there was another chick who was also similarly stopped and she also paid up, but some ten rupees or so. She was more sensible and less emotionally foolish.

After I parted with the money, the family was saying how it is not enough and giving me more sob stories, and I finally told them that rather than take me to the cleaners and looting me of all cash by unleashing the power of the senti, it would be more prudent to use the ‘drop-drop maketh an ocean’ approach and instead fleece more people.

That female and I walked away together, and I struck up a conversation with her, because I was pretty surprised by this new (and improved) technique of begging and just wanted to talk about it.

So I mentioned how it sounded convincing, and then we exchanged the names of companies we worked at. Politeness demanded, or so I thought, that I should introduce myself and so I told her that my name was so and so. She replied in turn saying, “ok, what will you do after I tell you my name?”.

I was honestly taken aback, because I had no intent whatsoever of ‘doing’ anything apart from being polite and scooting off from there to ensure that I was not late in meeting the other members of the band.

In any case, things like striking up conversations with arbit people is second nature for me, and I thought that this would be one of those things. I revel in anonymity, and like making some random conversations and then not meeting that person again in my life, just for kicks.

Now, I presume that the other party involved definitely had reasons to be untrustworthy of me, because she doesn’t know me. However, the somewhat vague reply just made me wonder whether I was being over-friendly in a circumstance that was not necessary, or whether the other party was being overtly paranoid about her outlook towards polite and courteous skinny men who looked like malnourished football hooligans but spoke decent english.

I remember a similar situation happening in the case of a good friend of mine, near Jayanagar 4th block, when he offered to assist some female whose Kinetic Honda was not starting, to which she rudely said ‘no’. I was watching with my mouth full of some chaat, and I felt that he did the decent thing, but the woman was stupid for behaving the way she did.

Next time such a situation arises, I guess it is best to just mve on, rather than even stand around and make arbit conversation.

I replied to her statement by saying, “I plan to move away from here, but I was being polite in introducing myself, thats all. I don’t intend on doing anything else.” I waved goodbye, by giving her my usual dorky smile and went away.

Her boyfriend needn’t worry about anything at all. She passed the ‘Agni-pariksha’.

In other news, apparently the family from Aurangabad has previously masqueraded as a family from Rajasthan as well, to fleece more unsuspecting people. I hope they don’t starve.