[abhisays]

One day, the manager asked Gharib to clean his table, which he started to do right away. Coincidentally, the duster hit the inkpot, which fell down; and the ink spilled onto the table. The manager saw this and got infuriated. He caught him by his ears and twisted them and started swearing at him with choicest profanities from all of India’s known languages. Poor Gharib kept listening with tears in his eyes and standing like a statue, as if he had committed a murder. I felt so bad about the manager’s pugnacious attitude over such a trivial matter. If another peon had committed even a bigger crime, he would not have been struck with such a fierce reprimand. I said to him in English, “Sir, you are being unjust. He did not spill the ink on purpose. Punishing him so severely is the height of impropriety.”

The manager said humbly, “You don’t know him. He is a scoundrel.”

“I don’t see any evil in him.”

“You haven’t known him yet. He is a rogue. His household farms with two bullocks. His dealings are in thousands of rupees, and he owns a number of buffalos. These are the things that he is arrogant about.”

“If he were so well off, why would he work as a peon in your office?”

“Trust me, he is really hard-shelled, and extremely stingy on top of that.”

“Well, even if he is, I don’t think it is a crime.”

“Mister, you don’t understand these things. Spend some more time here and you will figure out what kind of a rascal he is.”

Another gentleman spoke up, “Sir, his household produces maunds of milk and curds, maunds of peas, millet and gram, but he never even thinks of giving something to people at the office. We always yearn for such stuff here. So, why wouldn’t we be angry? He has got all this after he got employment here. He didn’t own a grain before that.”