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Adventures in Swindling
Aug 24 2007 | Views 37 |
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This was inspired by O'Henry's Jeff Peters story 'The Octopus Marooned' (the original story had two characters only--Jeff Peters and his buddy Andy something). I wrote the present story sitting in the library of my university; it was hurriedly written, in one sitting, and i don't quite like the writing myself in retrospect, but the story has its moments.
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The life of a proffessional swindler can be one of ease, joy, merriment, and bliss. It involves hardships a few times too, but lets not talk about that now. I have been in this noble proffession now for around five years along with my friends Sailu Singh, and Kris, and i've never been happier. A few words about my friends:
Sailu is a tall and handsome hunk who dropped out of college because as he put it: "Uff, you have to do so much work here." College wasn't Sailu's vocation obviously. For the most part, Sailu has two thoughts in his mind at any single time. Either he is thinking of or flirting with beautiful women, or he is thinking of how to generate capital, usually by certain dubious schemes. He himself told me once that he takes it upon himself to lighten the wallet or purse of any person sitting across him [with the exception of proffessional swindlers, "my colleagues", as he refers to them fondly] , and considers it a personal insult if he ever fails in his efforts. He is really, really sharp, is my friend Sailu.
Kris is the evergreen romantic who has been of great help to us whenever the subtler sex has been involved. He apparently understands the psycology of women better than either Sailu or me, for no woman has ever (to my knowledge) said anything nasty to Kris. Whether this is because of his charm or his tough physique one can only guess. Kris is also a pragmatist. Many a times we have turned to him for extricating ourselves from tricky situations, and he has never let us down. Besides all this though, and most importantly, Kris is also a bit of an idealist. He has a strong conscience and has on several occasions prevailed upon Sailu and me to stay away from things that were "unethical" to him. Things like dope and women, for example. I say "women" because we once had this scheme of Sailu soliciting single women , and we had devised a clever way of extracting dough from the felines, but Kris poured cold water on our plans. Oh well, he is a good man, is my friend Kris.
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Adventure the First:
Adventure the First:
Well, there were the three of us. And we were fast running out of cash. Having tramped all over UP, and going over Kanpur, and past Naankadi (an infamous little village town near IIT Kanpur, much renowned for its women), and onto Benaras, we found our resources getting more and more depleted. It was getting a little desperate actually and Sailu was cursing himself for having the stupidity to come along with us "fools". [It was primarily directed at me i think. I have this suspicion that Sailu doesnt think highly of me. He never calls me "Sir Rashmun" for example, and yet he claims that Kris was born with a "Sir" prefixed before his name.]
But then we arrived at this town called Phaphamau and things suddenly started to look good.
Phaphamau is a sleepy little village of around two thousand folks or so. The river Ganges runs on both sides of it and the town is connected to the mainland by a rickety old wooden bridge. The entire village is populated by a a hard working lot who have one vice: they like to drink heavily in the evenings.
It was the monsoon season now when we arrived at Phaphamau and Sailu with his sharp eyes immediately looked up at the pitch black sky and predicted that a heavy downpour was to be expected the next day. He was right.For the next two days, almost continuously, it rained and it rained and it rained. Having nothing to do, Kris and I sat almost all the while in a hut chatting with this pretty village belle (*Sara* was her name) while Sailu was trying his flirting skills with someone else ( i think her name was *Anu* but i am not sure). Curiously enough, i also saw Sailu looking contemplatively at the bridge on some occasions.
The next day Sailu advised Kris and me to buy out both the liquor shops in Phaphamau. How? Why? We asked. "Tut tut, look at that bridge guys," he said. And we looked and we saw--the bridge was shaking and rattling a lot--and we understood.
"Its a risk," i said.
"We'll take it," replied Kris.
By the evening of the same day we had bought both the liquor shops for the sum total of two thousand rupees.
The next day, luckily for us, the bridge collapsed, as we had expected it to. Cut off from both ends, Phaphamau had become an island with the nearest town fifty miles away.
Come evening time, the villagers found only one liquor store open--the "krisara" (named after the first few letters of Kris's, Sailu's, and my name) store. All drinks (desi "tharra" and "handiya" for the most part) were three rupees a glass. The villagers understood that we had them. We expected trouble, but they were quite nice about it really. On the first night itself we collected eighteen hundreed rupees. If the present conditions remained for a few more days or even a week, we'd make a decent killing, the three of us thought and spoke of happily.
We celebrated our success late that night by drinking some of our own liquor--"handiya" for the most part. ["Handiya", for those of you who dont know, is really home made rice wine, and its quite potent (has a high alcoholic content). Wouldnt recommend it to any of you 'cause if not prepared properly, it can kill you.] All of us took some bottles of "handiya" with us when we went to bed-- a mistake as we would soon discover.
The next morning, i woke up late. On going to our shop, sometime later, i found Sailu in our shop looking a little puzzled.
"Whats the matter?," i said.
"I've been here for almost an hour and we haven't had any customer."
"Cheer up Sailu, they're all tired. They'll come around. You'll see. By the way, where's Kris?"
"He's left a note saying he's going out for a long morning walk to check out the country side, breathe in the fresh air, invirogate himself and so on. Says he'll be back late."
Good old Kris, i said to myself. He was always checking things out whenever we went to new places.
Well, the two of us waited and waited and it dawned on us that, for whatever reason, not a single person was coming for drinks at our place. It soon became evening and i strolled out to see what the hell was going on.
Upon asking, i was firstly directed to where Kris was. He had apparently collapsed while giving a speech to the villagers and was apparently recuperating in the hut of Sara--the girl we had seen him chatting up with on a few occasions (For whatever reason, Sara had failed to inform us that Kris was at her place). He was still unconscious when we came to Sara's place, and we asked her what had happenned.
"Well, Kris had apparently had a few drinks too many and was still in a bit of a stupor when he decided to give this speech to all the village folks. Since he is so well respected, practically everyone who is anyone came to this speech."
"And what was this speech about?" i asked.
"Abstinence," she replied, " and, for your information, the entire village has sworn not to touch alcohol for an entire year."
I looked at Sailu in astonishment and disbelief, and i saw he was equally horrified. But then, as we were taking the still unconscious Kris back to our place, we convinced each other that the world was an ocean, and there were other fishes to be caught.
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