Monday, October 7, 2013

Good Samaritans do exist

Dusting off the cob-webs in the blog and here I'm !

I wanted to record this incident here. On a bright morning, I set off to office in the regular BMTC bus, took change from the conductor and placed the change in a compartment in the bag and kept the purse inside. The day passed and it was time to leave office,I take the change kept in the compartment from this morning and  get the ticket. I sit in the ladies section of the bus and travel by making random observations untill I reach the stop where I need to alight.

I make random notes of what I need to purchase, do the shopping and take my bag to get the purse and viola, what do I find, the zip is happily open and the purse is missing!!! I tell the counter guy that I'll not be able to purchase the items as I dont have money to pay and apologize to him. Then, start the calls to all customer care to deactivate the card. All cards are looted: Pan card, Driving License, Credit Card, Debit card accompanied by cash.

S drove all the way from the other part of Bangalore to pick me up ( I did have remnants of the morning cash, could have taken an auto to reach home) and we reached home and continued the phone calls to customer care to ensure all cards are blocked. Then, I started reminiscing the course of events and simply couldnt recall how/when the zip would have been delicately opened and the wallet stolen in the ladies section of the bus., when there could have been people watching this act..In the meantime, just try out the luck if I'd misplaced the wallet at office so,called up a colleague to check for the same.

Fast forward two days , I get a call from an unknown number who claims to be an auto driver. And he speaks such fluent English and verifies my details, asking if I could recognise my Driving License number by spelling it out. I jumped literally and he said the wallet was with him and the crds intact , but no money was left. I thanked him profusely and asked his whereabouts and told him that either me or S would come , identify ourselves and get it back.  Since it got late that day, we couldnt get the purse from him. Coincidentally, next day also, we couldnt go. But the third day, S went and collected the wallet. I'd asked him to take some sweets, S  offered some money along with sweets, the Good Samaritan took the sweet box, but rejected to take the cash. Along with the wallet, he did give the driving license of one of the 3 ladies who had left the wallet in his auto , gave me a telephone number which he said they had asked him to dial from his phone and said they spoke in Tamil. He also added that he would come to the Police Station to identify the thieves, if we filed a police complaint.

Thank you , Mr. Nagaraj. Thank you so much for saving me the hassle of re-applying for Pan card and Driving License. And more of such kind of people are required in this country.Thanks again!

2 comments:

  1. Wow SM!!

    I didnt think many honest people existed in this world!!

    Good that you didnt have to re-apply for all the important cards!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sri,
    Yes, I took a lot of time for me to sink in the fact that a lost purse is now found and a random stranger calls to inform about it. I really hope more of such kind exist

    ReplyDelete