Altruistic stupidity

He was shabbily dressed, seemed like a typical budhi jeevi and even had a cloth bag, to complete the look. I don't know if it was compassion or sympathy that I felt for him. A talented fellow from a really poor family, who had struggled hard to get into the best engineering college in the state, he introduced himself as Rajakrishnan. The first few weeks, he came across as a really friendly guy and that definitely increased my urge to help him. I had quite a few extra shirts and made it a point to never wear the same shirt twice in the same month and here I was, in the same class as a person who wore the same shirt almost everyday of the week. We observed that a stain that was discovered on the shirt that he wore on Monday, was visible on every shirt that he wore until Friday. So he obviously had to be wearing the same shirt throughout the week.

A few weeks later I had gone to Bombay with my friends and while visiting fashion street, I bought a few extra shirts for Kaja as we affectionately called Rajakrishnan. On my return I gifted the shirts very diplomatically to Kaja lying to him that they were my old shirts and he can have them if he wanted. I did not want to hurt his ego and he did look to be the sensitive type. He did not have any issues with accepting my gift. I slept like a baby that day. I had finally done something really compassionate in life. I made someone else's life better. I dwelled on my 'great deed'.

A few days later we were playing cards at my house. It was raining heavilythat day and I offered to drop Kaja at his house. So I took my Santro, dragged Sujim with me for company. We ended up at this house, which actually did not look like the shack I had imagined it would be. Infact it was bigger than my house. I was thinking, maybe this is somewhere he works or even worse someone in his family might be working here. So he opens the gate and inside was parked a spanking new Honda City and a Maruthi Omni. He welcomed us into his 'humble' home. Apparently his parents were like high officials in VSSC and he was stinking rich. He liked to maintain a simple lifestyle and dress simple.

I wasted my money and effort in giving charity to someone who was thrice as rich as I was. Since that day I have never even tried to be 'nice' and 'charitable'. Another Kaja victim was my classmate Saju. We were doing a project at Kerala university. It involved going to a dept and asking each person a few questions. Saju was smartly dressed and Kaja was his shabby self. Saju gave the clerk a questionnaire to answer. The man took one look at Kaja and without even checking what the paper said, took out a Rs.5 note and said " This is all I have as donation for today". Saju felt real insulted and took an oath that day to never go with Kaja again unless he was dressed for the occasion.

Its been almost 10 years since I gifted him the shirts. The other day I saw a few photos of Kaja and I was shocked to see him wear the exact same Khaki shirt that I gave him, or maybe I was wrong not to have expected it.