Some time ago, my dad was conned in a bus ride back from work. A crook picked his pocket while another distracted him with a story that he saw money fall out from my Dad’s bag. He only had a photo copy of his drivers license and a few spare change for the bus fare so no major harm done there. My dad was sure not thrilled and he was quite angry with himself for letting his guard down and trusting the word of a stranger. The thing is my father grew up in a small town, every body knew every body and they talked about every thing. So his natural instinct is to trust people. He would usually tell people his life story the fifth minute he met someone. We have always made fun of his for being so easy going and like-able but this was different he was sort of blaming himself for being nice in today’s world. No matter what we said, he refused to believe it was sheer bad luck and decided to be more selective in his company and choice of words. Though at times i had wished he had shown better judgement in his company, i absolutely did not like it when he became a grumpy version of himself. I thought that he would get over the incident over time, but he was pretty shaken up and refused to give up his grouchy self.
Two weeks later he received a call from an unknown number. My dad being his new self refused to answer the phone from the unknown number, but three or four rings later my mother picked up the phone. The call was for my dad from a person in Sankari (45 minutes away from home). He was a trucker and he had found my dad’s wallet near the bus stand. Apparently the crooks had thrown the wallet away finding nothing worthwhile in it. The guy had come upon the wallet lying in the ground and upon finding the emergency contact details safely stashed in the wallet he called the number to tell us that he had found the wallet. He said he was currently on his way to another town and he told us that he could either ship the wallet over post or hold on to it and deliver to him the next week when he was back in town. My dad of course did not trust a word he said, he even had a theory that the crooks were trying to con him again as they were not happy with what they got the first time. I think he managed to say that since there was nothing of use there he did not particularly care about the missing wallet. My mother started to give my dad a hard time for putting his own details in the emergency contact card details. yeah! right.
Three days later, we received a package and inside was the missing wallet. The trucker had sent it to the address on the license copy and along with it a note to my dad. Translated it read something like this. Dear sir, I know one can go through some bad experiences in life, but do not let these stray incidents affect your trust in humanity. Hope this reaches you and makes you feel better. My dad immediately called him back, thanked him and even offered to reimburse the cost to send the package. The stranger refused and just asked my dad to not let go of his goodness that easily. Now i don’t know if he had tears of happiness or if he was just overcome with emotion. But he was smiling for sure and now does like to claim that he knew that good things would eventually happen to him. yeah! right.
A couple of crooks and a gentleman taught me a valuable lesson that day. The importance of Kindness. Sure courage, loyalty, intelligence are all virtues that assist one in the quest for perfection, but kindness and loyalty are what makes you a better human.
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