At last he found it – a small strip of space to park his scooter, squashed amidst a seemingly never-ending row of vehicles. Relief swept over him. This was a stroke of pure luck! Jealously guarding his discovery against other two-wheeler riders who might swoop down and snatch it from him like hungry hawks, he alighted and managed to wedge his scooter into the little clearing. Having thus accomplished this Herculean task (for it was indeed a triumph at such peak working hours), he let himself relax for a few moments, diligently wiped his face and pushed back his hair to appear presentable enough to transact his sales calls. He was supposed to look like one of those suave, dynamic sales executives that so many recruitment ads keep asking for.
Finally, he picked up his briefcase, swore at the sweltering heat and was just debating with himself about where to make the first of the three sales calls in that vicinity, when he felt somebody tugging at his trousers. He glanced downwards and recoiled at once. It was one of those tiny street urchins – who while they wash vehicles for a living never seem to wash themselves – trying to capture his attention.
“Saab, shall I wash your scooter?” the scraggy kid said, his face screwed up in an ingratiating appeal.
“No!” responded the sales executive aggressively. Far from being discouraged, the kid only amplified his efforts.
“But, saab … look how dirty your scooter has become,” the boy whined disapprovingly, whipping up a cake of dust resting on the vehicle. The sales executive climbed onto the footpath in a bid to get away quickly.
The urchin was after him in a jiffy, his appeal now rising to shrill protestations. “Please, saab, it’ll cost you only three rupees. I’ll clean your scooter nicely. You will be able to see even your face in it, saab!” Noticing the unrelenting expression on the saab’s face, the kid grovelled further still. “Okay, saab … only for you … just two rupees, saab.”
It was then that the young sales executive had a really good look at the urchin, as he turned to drive that little pest away. He noticed the haggard innocence reduced to bone beneath the grimy appearance. He saw also the pathetic appeal in the child’s eyes, undeserved by one so young. Now, the sales executive was not really unkind. Moreover, in spite of his irritation, he could see that here was hopeless poverty striving to earn an honourable living and not resorting to beggary. That alone was reason enough to bestow a reward on the kid. As far as he was concerned, he considered begging to be thoroughly contemptible. His heart melted with compassion for the boy. But he was also a typical Indian, bargaining and negotiating were in his blood, nay national genetic code. And so the sales representative said, “I will give you a rupee and a half only, okay?” The kid nodded his head vigorously.
“But clean the scooter properly,” he warned the kid with the air of one having clinched a deal on one’s own terms – a rarity in his profession. Then off he went to get on with his official “challenges” and fulfil his “targets”. His spirits had soared because of his recent display of benevolence towards humanity.
A scowl was evident on the sales executive’s face as he walked towards his parked vehicle, an hour later. His shoulders were drooping. And it was justifiable too. His sales calls had not gone well. They had started badly and plummeted to worse. The gentleman who had received him on his first call had courteously tolerated his sales pitch for five minutes, and then politely but very firmly, declined to have anything further to do with him or the product he had been selling. The person at his second place of call had curtly snapped at him for having come without a prior appointment and dismissed him without so much as a chance to say anything. Our sales executive had been feeling down then, though not out. But the third sales call completely broke his spirits. The man there seemed to revel in sarcasm. He had freely mocked the sales executive’s attempts to sell his product and had bullied and jeered him throughout, punctuating it with sardonic sniggers.
This, more than anything else, depressed and infuriated the sensitive salesman. And it was this bruised and battered sales ego that he was now nursing, and which was seething to boil over and spit its venom on some appropriate object.
“Saab, look how clean your scooter is looking now! Give me my money, please.” The kid had chosen the unfortunate moment to press his claim.
And that was it! That bruised sales ego found its outlet. The fuming sales executive took one look at his scooter and burst out. “Don’t lie. You haven’t cleaned my scooter properly, you filthy mongrel,” he thundered.
He pointed to a small patch of dirt – a mixture of grease and dust, which would’ve been impossible to clean anyway, and shouted, “Look at that. That is how you clean my vehicle?! And then you have the cheek to ask for money?” He reached into his pocket, took out a 50 paisa coin and flung it at the boy. “Here, you wretch! That’s all that you will get.:
The kid, who was already cowering with fright, began to moan miserably, “But, saab, you had said a rupee and a half.”
“Get lost,” the not-so-debonair sales executive shouted and gave the boy a scorching look. The boy wilted under the fearsome gaze and slunk away.
The sales executive started his scooter and roared away.
Conscience – for those who have it – is a very irksome thing. It lies low till the squall of emotion and fury reigns and suddenly surfaces to let lose the monsters of guilt and remorse. Arguments against your behaviour shoot up like guided missiles and crash through the fragile walls of self-justification.
A similar process of severe self-recrimination had besieged the sales executive sometime later. He was being persecuted by his latent conscience. He knew he had behaved atrociously – “absolutely like a pig”, he told himself. He had let his sales failures and injured self-respect get the better of him. And in turn, he had gone and heaped abuse on that poor little boy who had tried to earn his living honourably. Victimisation – that is exactly what he had done. How he loathed himself for that now! No human being had the right to humiliate another like that. Worse still, he had done that to a small, innocent kid! As if he really expected the boy to wash the scooter so scrupulously clean for that paltry a sum. It wasn’t even possible, and he had used it as an excuse to pay the boy just fifty paise. He had cheated a mere child! A mere child! Was he any better than the scoundrels who exploit child labour?
And he had flung the coin at the boy, as if he were a beggar. The man felt sick just thinking about what he had done. How could he have acted so heartlessly? It was simply unforgivable.
Suddenly, the one rupee which he had deprived the kid of began to weigh heavily in his pocket and on his soul.
He turned his vehicle around and frantically sped back to the spot where the incident had occurred not so long ago. Really, it was people like him who drove such poor but hardworking folk to frustration and wrongdoing, he thought. Just then, he reached the place. Luckily, he found a vacant spot to park his scooter. But the boy was nowhere to be seen. The sales executive started walking down the street alongside the parked vehicles. Surely, the kid would be somewhere around. But even after looking up and down the entire length of the footpath, he could not find the boy. Desperation now seized the sales executive. He wasn’t being given a proper chance to make amends. As he returned to his scooter disconsolately, his eyes strayed towards a beggar languishing nearby. The fellow, with the universal impunity of beggars, was showering blessings on passers-by and rattling his tin with characteristic nonchalance.
The salesman walked up to the beggar, hesitated and then compromised on his principles by dropping a few coins in the beggar’s tin.
“Er,” he said, addressing the beggar, “there is a small kid who washes vehicles here. Do you know where I can find him now?”
The beggar blessed him and then said indifferently, “Must be loafing around somewhere. He’ll come back later … by evening perhaps …”
A fresh stab of guilt and self-condemnation pierced the sales executive. And then, an idea struck him. A heart always wants to offload guilt at the earliest and therefore, gets convinced by the most ridiculous ways of doing so.
The sales executive dug into his pocket and produced two rupees. He handed them over to the beggar. “Will you give this money to the boy when he comes back? Tell him that the man who scolded him has given it,” the sales executive said apologetically.
The beggar took the money with a reverential demeanour. “Don’t worry,” he assured solemnly.
And thus, the sales executive eased his conscience. The beggar helped himself to a couple of extra bidis later in the day, while the scraggly street urchin continued to get a raw deal in most bargains, because of meanness, deliberate or accidental, and conspiring fate!
Excerpted with permission from ‘A Susceptible Conscience’ in The Perfect Day and Other Stories, Salil Desai, Westland.
