The good and the bad

How honest is our society ?

I say it is pretty honest in general. If you don't agree read on ...

Everyday in newspapers and TV we watch

so much

of negative news that

sometimes it forces us to think whether

we are living in a civilized & honest society or a barbaric & crime-ridden

society.

If I question people, without a thought, mostly people will point towards the ugly side.

However I differ.

Below are some real life incidents that are not usual news stories, but do reflect the positive side.

The leather jacket

My Jijaji was travelling by train from Delhi to Jharkhand. He had a nice expensive leather jacket and in the train hung it from the hook. Unfortunately while deboarding, he forgot to take it and realized the mistake once he reached home. He assumed it to be lost forever. Surprisingly after a few weeks a postcard came to the Jharkhand address mentioning about the jacket, a contact number and the address to pick it from which was an hour away.What happened was after he got-off the train, one of the co-passenger noticed the jacket. Looking for clues to return it, he found an old dry-cleaning bill in its pocket that mentioned the address. That passenger got off at the next station with the jacket. Later dropped a postcard at the address mentioned in the bill telling the owner to collect it.

The bag and the boy

This incident happened in gole market. My dad was returning home from his office in a bus with his office bag in hand. A little boy tried to snatch it and managed to deboard the bus with the bag. Dad came home upset as it had all the office keys, a dairy with all the important contact numbers etc (those were pre-mobile days). later in the evening a phone call on our landline came from a Dad's colleague asking him whether he lost a bag or not. Dad was surprised, how could his friend know this. It happened that after the little boy who snatched the bag, ran, he was seen by a person on the footpath. he ran after him. After some distance, caught him. Then went till the police station (2 kms away) to submit the bag. At the police station, they opened it for some identification, found my dad's dairy and his colleague's phone number was on top. They called him to verify and then called us. We went to the police station, collected the bag and the phone number of the person who submitted it. Later thanked that person and got to know he came to gole market from very far for some work and had to make a good effort to locate the police station.

My mom's purse

This is oldest example of honesty I remember. I was a small kid then, maybe in class 3 or 4. Our family was travelling somewhere by a DTC bus on a sunday afternoon. Near the gol-dak-khana (GPO) roundabout, while the bus was taking a sharp turn, somehow my moms purse slipped and fell out of the back door. People who know that place will recall, how wide the roads are there the speed with traffic flows there, specially back then when traffic was thin. By the time we realized, and my dad asked the conductor, who in turn informed the driver, who then stopped the speeding bus, it was nearly a km away (almost near the RML hospital, for ppl who know the place). My dad went back but alas could not find it. It had cash, some gold-earrings, and keys to our home. And address was written inside. So hurriedly we went back home. My dad had duplicate keys. Than dad was thinking of getting the locks changed. Then surprisingly that evening a man came asking for us and asked whether we lost a purse. We answered yes. That person saw the bag falling from the bus. Picked it up, waited for some time then proceeded. Later saw the address in the back and came all the way to our house to return it.

So, on second thoughts, if you analyze, on a personal front, how many people you personally know are honest or dishonest.

In other words, as a quick sample, take all your orkut or facebook friends. How many of them are likely to return a mobile or a wallet they find accidently ? And a big chunk of society is made up of people like us and them...

PS: This writeup reminded me of an old Reader's Digest article, summarizing their experience when they deliberately lost 30 mobile phones in Mumbai to test honesty. Interestingly 24 phones out of 30 were returned to the owners by the people who found them !!

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