 Beyond the call of duty
The lunchroom discussion shifted from Suresh Raina's fielding and R P Singh's bowling to the Music Academy elections before a subject more immediate came up.
One of our colleagues had lost his Blackberry last week at this very lunchroom, a fellow luncher said, prompting me to ask if thefts were common in our office,
contrary to what I had believed all along. I was told my touching faith in the honesty of the many people who entered our premises to perform various duties
was misplaced. A list of cellphones, calculators and pens lost was quickly furnished by several of those present.
My friend Shivakumar then related a story that redressed the balance in favour of human goodness. Shiva and his son Ramakrishnan, who had just completed his
MBA, had gone to attend a wedding reception at the Raghavendra Kalyana Mandapam at Kodambakkam recently. Long after father and son returned home that night they discovered that Ramakrishnan had left his cellphone in an autorickshaw they had travelled in. Several calls to the number were of no avail as no one picked the phone up and they went to bed reconciling themselves to the loss of
the instrument.
Next morning, Shiva was delighted to receive a call from Vinayakam, the autorickshaw driver, who informed him that he had handed over the cellphone to
a drugstore near the kalyana mandapam and his autorickshaw stand. He found the name 'Appa' listed in the cellphone and guessed it must be the owner's father's
name. The phone had been kept in a desk drawer at the drugstore, the reason why no one heard it when Shiva and Ramakrishnan called.
Ramakrishnan then went to the shop, identified himself and collected the cellphone. The pharmacist did not have Vinayakam's address, but Ramakrishnan was determined to see the driver and thank him personally. He waited there for quite a while, and sure enough Vinayakam turned up eventually. Ramakrishnan thanked him profusely and wanted to reward him. Vinayakam initially resisted but finally he agreed to accept Rs 100 towards the fare he would have normally earned if he had not stood outside the mandapam the morning after finding the cellphone, expecting his passengers to return to the venue to attend the
muhurtam.
The episode reminded me of my own experience a couple of years earlier, when my son left his cellphone in a bus. When we called, the call was answered by a student from Vellore who had come to Chennai to attend an interview at an engineering college on Old Mahabalipuram Road. The young man waited on the main road near the college until we reached there to collect the phone. Like Vinayakam, he too refused to accept any reward.
V Ramnarayan
vramnarayan@gmail.com
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