Perils of vanity

            We were attending a wedding reception in Amravati. The evening was pleasant and the ambiance delectable. We were lounging leisurely sipping steaming hot tomato soup from disposable cups, when my elder cousin narrated an incident he was involved in when he had previously visited Amravati for attending a similar reception. The protagonist of this incident is a gentleman who is a colleague of our brother-in-law. Both happen to be inspectors with Mumbai Police. I remember him as a handsome fellow with a Vinod Khanna like personality, although he did possess a rash and ostentatious edge to his character.

            This gentleman had come down from Mumbai to Amravati to attend the reception of this context. True to his disposition he was wearing a heavy gold chain wrapped in three circles around his neck upon an exquisite safari suit. When asked, “this is my style”, was his off hand response. After enjoying a sumptuous dinner, we decided to have a paan, narrated my cousin. Together we were three people, the gentleman, another acquaintance and I, who walked down to a nearby paan kiosk in Rajapeth area of Amravati. It was around 9.30 to 10 pm and we happened to be the only clients at the kiosk as we ordered our respective preference of paans. It will not be out of place to mention here that all three of us were endowed with tall and heavily built physiques. At this point in time, I suddenly caught a glint of a naked sword through the corner of my eye as a thin figure emerged out of the darkness. Without a slightest warning he unleashed a swinging blow on the gentleman and it brushed across his forehead as I managed to deflect its full force with a push across the chest of the assailant, in the nick of time. Before we could fully comprehend the rapidly unfolding situation, another wiry fellow emerged from the other side to yank the gold chain off the now profusely bleeding gentleman. Within moments both individuals swiftly disappeared into the dark by lanes! Here we were, left dumbfounded, unable to decide whether to give a chase to recover the robbed asset or pay attention to the nasty wound which had been inflicted out of the blue. As we juggled the tasks of obtaining medical help and lodging a formal complaint, to say that the gentleman was enraged would be an understatement. The irony being that the law enforcer himself had become a victim. All his efforts at solving the crime proved futile; although his being posted at Mumbai and not being a local did not help matters either, thus concluded my cousin.

            As we disengaged ourselves from this riveting anecdote, I struggled to extract a moral out of the story. “One must shun ostentation and strive to cultivate humility” was what I finally came up with as I tossed the cup into the nearby bin after sipping the final remains of the by now insipid tomato soup. This was of course easier said than done because humility is a quality, which disappears at the moment you think you have it!