Saturday, 8 November 2014

THE STORY OF ZIA

Position, power, pasture surrounded dwelling, luxury car, fat bank balance, family and friends give life a vacation from worries. A person often undergoes such experience, most often while dreaming. Things are totally opposite in real time. Life appears to be entirely different in real world. Goals are not easily accomplished and target not effortlessly achieved. It happens that you are not only required to take care of your own self but also of people around you in the family and especially ageing and ailing parents.

It doesn't end there, cut throat competition, soaring inflation and company closures drains out the patience in you. You feel lonely and isolated not knowing what to do and where to go. When you are in the midst of such a phase an unexpected arrival of a friend, a relative or a well-wisher with an overseas job-offer provides you a much needed solace; it happens to be a soothing for a moment, till the time your eye fall on your aging parents meddling with something in the backyard.

Caring of parents and compulsions of life often never come to terms. They prefer to take diagonally opposite directions. Zia too, had to take decision. His conscious would not allow him to leave his parents but the pathetic condition his family was going through couldn’t be neglected. He chose to fly to the desert land of Saudi Arabia and landed in Al-Jubail.

I was introduced to him by my friend Bipin. Zia used to run a laundry. He was an embodiment of energy, whatever he did, he did it fast, I never saw slackness in any of his act while working on the ironing machine or doing the delivery. Frequent visit to his shop brought me closer to him. Sometimes he would get emotional, would ask me to wait and rush to the shop next door and returns with a can of soft drinks or Juice. I would often deny but he would not listen. I learned that weekend for him was a day of pizza, pepsi and playing cricket; at times he would insist me to join him.

Running the laundry was not easy. Though working hard from morning 08.00 till 11.00 in the night; handling man, money and machine was not easy. Meeting customer commitment and a machine breakdown would send him crazy. At times he had to arrange money and get the machines repaired. These was not all, he had to be simultaneously caring on the home front. On the request of his relatives he got married though a telephonic consent only to bring home a caretaker for his ageing parents. This marriage didn't last long. His hope of doing something for his aging parent was short lived.

One day on a visit to his shop I found him cheerful. I asked him the reason. He told that he had won a lottery of ten thousand Riyals. I inquired into the matter. I asked him: Did you buy a lottery ticket. No, he said, I received a call; it said the telephone company in a random selection picked up my cell number. It than asked me to buy six hundred Riyals worth of recharge coupons, scratch the numbers and enter them in to the system to pay for the administration charges for the delivery of the prize. He continued: “but I sense something fishy”. In between his phone rang, it was the same person on the line, asking for some more recharge coupons. Zia showed no interest. The other person insisted not to deny the wish of God; instead gracefully accept his mercy and blessing, and cooperate to complete the formalities. Zia started feeling cheated. He demanded his money back. The person on the other end demanded fifty riyal recharge coupon as administrative charges to full the money out of the system.

No explanation was required. Zia understood the intention of the person on the other end. With heavy heart he cut the line and got back to work. Few customers entered the shop. I too left the shop assuring him to come back the next day. As I walked back to my room I was trying to guess the turmoil Zia was going through. He had borrowed few bucks to buy the recharge coupons and had promised the lender to payback tomorrow.

In cheating even God is not spared.

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