Thief??

A tasty Pav Bhaji to fulfill the naughty hunger of Saturday afternoon is like a dream come true for an IT professional working day and night for the entire week to resolve a technical problem that has irked the customers to great extent. He parked his new car next to a roadside pav-bhaji stall. He was wearing the latest jeans available in the market and a t-shirt that can give you comfort at any weather. Money is never a scarcity for him but time to relax is. Earphones are like part of his body now. He sometime feels god missed fitting earphones while making humans. He expects this should be an in-built feature of human body.

He got his plate of pav-bhaji and started enjoying it sitting in his car. A dirty, poor kid came next to his car window and shamelessly extended his hand towards him and then moved his hand close to his dry lips to give a signal that he needs some food. By now this techie has learnt the technique how to ignore these and continue enjoying his food. He started practicing it since past several years. Although at their home still his mother will not let anybody go hungry. But those are not possible now a days is how he has convinced his high-tech brain. You try doing good, you will be trouble his brain has learnt in past couple of years training.

He was busy changing the music in his iPod tucked to his waist when the dirty kid dared to snatch the pav from his plate and run. This was more than an insult to this gym-going healthy man than any other emotion. How dare that dirty kid snatch food from my plate. These thieves are the cause of our country’s bad impression. He shouted ‘Thief Thief’ and ran behind that boy for few steps and then stopped thinking it may look down market and scolded the pav-bhaji  walah for not restricting these kind of people to come nearby his stall. He did not take rest of the food from the plate as it was touched by the dirty boy and possibilities of infection is very high. The threw the entire stuff to the dustbin next to the stall, paid full money and went back to his world of bits and bytes.

This boy came running to his sister, a 2 year old playing near a tree. He showed her the pav to the kid and kid ran with its shaky legs to the boy and took it from him. She ate some of it and gave back to her brother. They both enjoyed the pav with great satisfaction. Then one assistant from that pav-bhaji stall came next to these kids enjoying one pav. He pulled the ear of the boy, “So, you want to be the future dacoit of this town?”.

That boy said, “No! I just snatched food. This is not bad.”.

The man said, “Don’t you know snatching things from others is called as theft.”, with great surprise.

“ Nobody told me so. But I see many things are snatched without permission and those were never called as theft.

Golden sunlight of the dusk meant for us are stolen by that big high-rise building without our permission is never called as theft. The peaceful sleep at night for people like us who sleep on the footpath is snatched by the vehicles moving on the road are never called as theft. There are many such examples I can give where people have snatched my portion of life are never called as thieves then why me snatching food from anybody should be called as theft?

Namaste!!!

– Stray Dog