Charity or Lack of Clarity

A few days back I met this random guy near station who came to me asking if I knew where Arya Samaj Mandir is. I didn't and said the same. And then suddenly he starts telling me his story of how he got robbed somewhere in the train and that all his stuff including his money is gone. Now I know we ger loads of people coming with this sort of crap every now and then. I mean, specially u get these guys who say they are from sholapur, kolhapur, pandharpur, etc. and ask you for money. But this guy was slightly different. He said that he was from mumbai and going to Mahbubnagar to visit his daughter and asked me to buy a ticket to Mahbubnagar.

Now a ticket to Mahbubnagar costs 18 bucks... yea, I know cheaper than lunch or dinner in any of the messes here. So I decided to do this one grand favour and buy him a ticket. To make sure I wasn't getting cheated or something, I stood with him in the line to get the ticket. The guy was quite good in English and started talking to about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. From there we somehow went to the topic of Indira Gandhi's assasination and he told me about this dude - Jarnail Singh Bindra. By this time, we were done taking the ticket and now we settled near a ledge and started talking about Pervez Musharraf. It was some 10 min. later that I realized I had a bus to catch and put an end to the conversation.

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It happened over an year ago. I was walking in this gully in Banjara Hills that this guy in a typical maulvi dress comes to me and said that a portion of the roof in the courtyard of the mosque had collapsed and that many children are now not able to sleep. He went on to ask for some money to build it. He showed a paper where he had also written how much others have donated. Next thing I knew I was giving me 30 rupees. Thank god I didn't have more khulla money or else I'd have given that as well.

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I don't know if I got duped. Don't know where my money ended. Whether it was really for the ticket or for the mosque, I don't know. But atleast I got satisfaction and ofcourse a reason for not shelling out money for those kids near traffic signals, esspecially after watching Slumdog Millionaire, :D