Blame it on Rio

The Rio Olympics is just 100 days away and I went into a rewind mode.

It was the summer of ‘82 when the whole of Delhi was running. No it wasn’t any epidemic or a bus strike but there was action everywhere as the Asian Games was round the corner. The race was to get tickets for events of your choice. I had a three pronged plan- Ma, Murali & Manush. While Ma, working in Army Headquarters, would try and get tickets from those reserved for the defence forces, Murali, my friend who was staying with a senior Member of Parliament, would get some from the MP quota. I had shared my wish list with the MPs personal assistant, Gaganji, who looked quite amused at the new request as against the usual railway reservation quota. The last, of course was the Man or Manush in me, going to the special counters opened for sale of tickets where a million thronged for a paltry available ones.

Ma was highly efficient in getting tickets but having little choice she got plentiful tickets for equestrian, wrestling, possibly because there were not many takers for them in the defence forces, but she also got a booklet full of tickets of one football quarter final match of which no one had any clue who would be playing. Murali, too, had done his part and the MP had garnered tickets in plenty.  Somehow, by the time I went to get my choice of tickets for football and hockey finals, swimming and boxing, I was handed tickets of the preliminary stages. Gaganji must have surely obliged his more influential friends with the better ones.

State Bank of India was the sole distributor of tickets and the counters would open at 9am. The first day I landed at the nearest venue, I got the shock of my life…so many people. Quietly I stood in a queue in blistering heat and within 10 minutes my agony came to an end…the tickets on sale that day had been sold out. Empty handed folks like me cast aspersions on the bankers….saale chor hain…they must have kept tickets for themselves and their friends and are making fools of honest citizens like us. Once again Ma came to my rescue. She contacted a colleague of hers whose son worked at SBI and was assigned the task of ticket sale. As planned, I landed up post dinner at Mrs Beck’s Malviya Nagar quarters to meet her son Sunil, the banker. We would have slept no more than a couple of hours and then we went together to Faridabad where Sunil was to sit behind the counter. It was 5am in the morning and I was third in the queue…there was no way I was going to be denied the hockey finals tickets where we were all looking forward to India playing Pakistan. No sooner had the counter opened at 9 am than all the tickets were sold out in 10 minutes flat ….I could get tickets for the semis and no more.

From getting tickets to the opening ceremony all happened so quickly and then the Games began. We went to see a number of events with our friends. As luck would have it, India reached the quarter finals in football, thanks to a brilliant curling shot by Prasun Banerjee. The booklet of tickets turned out to be for the quarter finals…yippee… Suddenly everyone was looking for the tickets of which I had ten.  Whoever approached me first, I sold off the tickets to friends at the printed price of Rs 20. My best friend Gaurab,who hadn’t made any effort to get any of the tickets, then approached me. The devil in me came to the fore! Why should I give him the tickets so easily? Can’t I charge him more? You may call it ‘black’.  Yes why not…after all I had gone through hell to get the tickets…why should someone get them so easily? After creating a story about how I had contacted someone who was selling the tickets for Rs 100, I sold the ticket to Gaurab for a profit of Rs 80. This was my first and last attempt at entrepreneurship or you may simply say black marketeering.

Fast forward to 2008.

My cell phone rang. I saw an unknown number…to pick or not to pick was the question and so I chose to accept the call. “Shibu, this is Gaurab. How are you?” Getting a call from your closest friend after nearly twenty years is such a good feeling that can’t be described. We spoke for long and at the end of the conversation, Gaurab said he was in a fix. His father-in-law was to undergo a bypass surgery and sister-in-law was also getting married at short notice and he needed some money. “Kitna”, I asked. “About Rs 35,000 if you can spare. I will return it very soon”, he said.

We had been friends for so long and had shared best of times together. We were there together at all places at all times. He was the only friend who came down from Delhi to Kolkata to be with me when I got married….Jai Veeru you might call us. Today my best friend was in trouble and he was asking for not a king’s fortune. I readily agreed to transfer the money to his bank account the very next day. I came to know later that everything had gone off well from the surgery to the wedding. Felt nice to have come to the assistance of a friend in need and especially when it was a friend so dear.

Months went by and then years went by, Gaurab did not return the money. A couple of times he said he would send me the money in small instalments. My friend must have been in real trouble or else he would have surely returned my money. That is what I kept telling myself and my wife. The money did not come back and the calls also ended. I never felt like ringing him and reminding him about the money. Now I have reconciled to the fact that this amount will never come back. Maybe it wasn’t mine.

This story is not to show a friend down but one to confess human frailty. How I sold a twenty rupee ticket at a higher price to a friend who was more than a brother to me. And now twenty five years later I had paid back my friend the amount I had cheated him with interest and inflation. Was this my karma…may be yes. Those are values we’ve been brought up with that when you do some wrong, you shall get paid back in the same coin. The redemption may not be immediate but surely it will happen in this world and in your time. Have you too ever felt the same? You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m n at the not the only one…..

PS. You may find it funny but I did go to Ambedkar Stadium with Ma to see wrestling on the day India and Pakistan were playing the finals of the Asian Games. After a couple of bouts came an announcement over the PA system that India had scored a goal against the mighty Pakistan at the National Stadium. Everyone started cheering and I was so upset that I was missing on the real action while watching some idiotic kushti. But then news started trickling in that Pakistan was scoring freely and they had beaten India 7-1….the most humiliating defeat for the host nation. The crowds at Ambedkar Stadium had gone completely silent but were woken up by Satpal winning the gold medal in the free style event….Chak de India!!

SS