with Sri Ganesh

... I have been a conceited fool and here has come revealed one more big failure in my life. P. has admitted stealing from me: a consistent, steady, cunning duplicity has thus been operating in him over a period of almost 2 years and, in this fashion, he has stolen about 10 lakhs which, he now says, were distributed amongst his relatives according to whatever pressing need came up. This went on until I found out, very late, that someone had been misusing my Barclays bank card – to the account which I kept there mainly for my daughter Auragni - and cancelled it, last December. (What happened next is that, in early May, my SBI card – to my current account here - was used to withdraw Rs. 10,000/- without my knowledge and I saw it online two days later and complained at once about it to the SBI people, asking for a print-out of the photograph which is normally taken at each transaction in the ATM booth; but as it had been another bank booth and not an SBI one, it took a lot of insistence and perseverance to finally obtain the images, which were finally forwarded to me.) Up until the incident in May, I would have sworn to the whole world that never, never, never could P do such a thing, even though the bank employees, for instance, were gently but very firmly repeating to me that this could only be done by someone using my card, that is, someone having easy access to my card, such as a close family member; they kept telling me that in all the instances of ATM card misuse, the “culprit” would always turn out to be closely related. On my side I had somehow conceived of the notion that it had to be someone able to manipulate the ATM machine computers or to gain access to their recorded data… But whatever it really was, I was determined to find the truth and I pestered the SBI people continuously till they obtained from the ICICI Bank the footage of that day in that particular booth in Kuillapallayam – the 9 th of May at 6.50 am. And at last, two days ago, the footage was e-mailed to me and I opened it and P.’s face was clearly there. So, yesterday early morning I confronted him: his face and his eyes became a blur and he turned away and left, saying he will come to me later; and he did call me and said he would tell me everything this morning at the temple and that he then would do whatever I decided was the right action... Ganeshji... I guess I got what I deserved for my conceit and arrogance, thinking that I have discernment and P. could do no wrong and our closeness was true, well-tested and genuine...

Yet here you are, Luminous and tender,

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