It was an endmost hot noon at Lahore. I was driving myself to office over bike. Had just crossed Chauburji when I saw a young man dragging his bike near the Petrol pump adjacent to Surayya Azeem Medical Hospital. He gave me a hand as if he needed help. With my passion to help him, I stopped a few feet ahead him.
The guy arrived me and started telling: I am a worker of coats manufacturing and have to go from Shahdara to near Gulberg for my work. While my bike standing, someone just took all my bike patrol out. And now I don’t have money as well. I asked him if he asked the pump guys to fill him a bit. He said yes, but they said, no patrol without money! Out of my gut reaction, I took my wallet out and gave him a 50 rupees note. He thanked me and I continued driving on my way.
In a couple of seconds, I thought I should verify if he went back to the pump and get himself relieved?
I looked at him in the rear view mirror. And he was standing with his bike on side stand. With the slowed up bike and looking back in mirror, I came to know that he was looking at me with his bike on side stand! I got a bit suspicious if he was professional guy collecting money by making people fool?
I took the next U-Turn that was ~20 meters away from where I met him. I drove normally to let him not detect me. But he saw me again! To my surprise, he was taking his bike out of the patrol pump. It increased my suspicion! It hadn’t been 2-3 minutes while he had done with:
- Dragging his bike back to patrol pump
- Got the bike fueled
- Leave the patrol pump again with dragging bike!
Being on the other side of the road, I had an opportunity to have another look on him after the next U-turn. So, I did the same! I circled around Chauburji, and reached near patrol pump again. Pump was having very less vehicles to patrol. That is why I thought, he might have got his bike fueled due to available vacant places at the pump..
Having not seen him at the place I met him, I became satisfied a bit, that he must’ve had drove his way. But in a few meters, I saw a person waving at another biker on road. A biker drives to the side in same way as I did. The handing guy was same who stopped me in same way!
That moment, I didn’t stop and abuse the “looter”, neither did I ask the other guy who was stopping his bike to not help the fraud guy. In my view, if that one person is doing this fraud, then numerous other guys are doing it throughout the country as well! I have to work out on these aspects:
- What are the odds that push someone to do this fraud?
- How can it be abolished?
- Is the virtue done by me or the next guy, fruitful for their own souls?
- Isn’t this virtue causing encouragement to fraud guys?
- Should the helping guys discourage every other person asking for monetary help?
- Should these incidents be reported somewhere to take action against such guys?
- Is punishment a solution for individual fradulants?
- Isn’t it a logical outcome for a no-job country?
- Doesn’t government have any idea of these incidents at any level?
- Are these incidents an implication of flawed policies made by our parliamentarians?
- Shouldn’t our govt. start thinking of relieving common people instead of making perks lawful for upper class only?
- What is the moral status of our society?
- How far we are from anarchy?
- Can we believe anyone else except ourselves, in any case?
I want you to ponder over these aspects as well. Such things happen often to all of us. As our religion asks us to verify if our donation is reaching the needy, then we should be aware of where exactly and how exactly is our money being spent. It is our religious and national responsibility to find original responsible guys.
Thanks for reading, and I believe, you will start thinking in this dimension after the read. I will write more articles in it’s continuation after my findings from religious doctrines and the learned political science people.
This incident is real, not a fiction.
Arshad Aleem 