Its a Steal!

It has been a while since I have written something and for sometime, I have had this topic in my mind but somehow I wasn't getting the time to write it down. Today, I finally decided to sit down and share this story.

I was born into a south-indian brahmin family which was not financially well off and had to cut down our wants to make ends meet. As a child, I never understood how my parents saved money by not refusing to fulfill every want of mine. All I saw was that I wasn't getting the things I wanted and so need to find ways to have them. This brought about the habit of stealing in me. Any small change that my granny used to keep on the refrigerator, or near the T.V cabinet used to immediately disappear into my pockets and straight to the hands of the juice vendor or the fast food stall near my house.This habit was noticed by my dad as he was a self-certified detective. B profession he was a banker, but he had a keen eye on the amount of money he has spent and the amount ha has left on a daily basis.

Even a single penny missing from his purse would not go unnoticed by him and he will make sure he makes us realize the importance of that money. So, I even started to pocket the spare change left near his purse and nearly every time I was caught and warned to not do it again.But, the satisfaction of getting my wants fulfilled was much more overwhelming than the warnings I received. And being in a family which hardly provided me additional money then the travelling expenses, it was difficult to get money to satisfy wants. habit of mine grew with age and slowly the spare change transformed into notes of smaller denominations. And now, I had even started pocketing stuff from outside which i couldn't afford with the extra money. There were two incidents, one of which was in a local mart and the other in a temple. The mart incident involved me slowly stealing a KitKat from the counter and putting it in my 3-year old cousins pocket. While leaving the manager stopped us, checked her pocket and found the chocolate inside. They called my granny to the store and told her about the incident. She was livid and promised me that she will report it to my dad. To say that I was scared would be an understatement because I was terrified. I knew how my dad would react, so I begged her not to do so. Finally she gave in and didn't tell him.

But this leniency on my granny's part didn't improve me but rather made me worse. The second incident involved me attending a class at the local temple. There was an old teacher there who was an expert in sanskrit who also happened to be a guru in that temple. I used to visit him to learn the basics in sanskrit. Every single day, I noticed that his disciples would perform their daily rituals and leave their ritual plates at the far end of the main hall. This plate involved a few pious items and a small bowl of spare change. I used to sit near the plates pretending to wait for my teacher and used to pocket the change when no one was looking. One fine day, it so happened that one of them saw me doing it and was waiting for me to leave the class. As soon as I got up to leave, he came behind me and asked me to empty my pockets. I was caught red handed and there was no way getting round it. This time I was fortunate enough to not have this incident reported to my granny. They insulted me thoroughly and let me go. But even, this incident didn't make me mend my ways.'

Over the years, whenever i visited my regular stores, I used to pocket stuff lying around which would be quite costly to buy. This made me a natural at facial expressions, body languages and excuses on being caught. Lately, since the last 5 years, I had completely stopped stealing and had decided to not do so and risk tarnishing my image. But, sometimes when I get opportunity, I just check how good I still am by grabbing some small stuff once in a year. Its more of a thrill now than a habit. Even in the place i recently shifted to for my job, I was shopping for some cutlery and happened to put a pack of 50 plates inside my bag. I didn't notice that I hadn't paid for the same. When i came home, I realized what I had done and smiled to myself. Still got it!!

But the story doesn't end there, as living in a new country as a bachelor comes with its challenges. I moved in with people from my own country who used to work in different companies at different positions except for one who worked with me but in a different location. This guy was a miser who hardly removed any money from his wallet to pay for expenses. As days went on, I started noticing shortage in the money I leave in my wallet. Plus, the money I left in my pockets after going out on off-days would not be there in my pockets the next day. All cash I lost so far in this new place were in the denominations of 50s and 100s bringing the total till now to 400. It infuriated me to lose so much money within 2 months of my stay in the country but at the same time taught me to more responsible as I used to be a very absent minded guy. With all this stealing, I just realized how my dad and granny would have felt when they lost their spare change or notes. What goes around, comes around I guess. I just hope it doesn't keep going round and round with me. Strongly hoping to have seen the last of this stealing thing.


P.S : I know its the miser room-mate who is stealing but we are just waiting to catch him red-handed.