Have you ever wondered if good will prevail over evil? Not in movies.. Not in comics.. in real life.. in our own lives..
I suppose it did not incite a supernatural battle between a cruel and wicked villain and a kindhearted, brave, handsome hero. Well, I was talking about the big battle in a congested space - our minds. Some times we don't even realize the battle horns have been blown.
Here is an instance. When i went to withdraw money from the ATM the other day for 900 Rs, i got 2100 Rs. I rechecked the reciept a couple of times to confirm it was not my mistake. According to it, i just withdrew 900. I had to walk on the tight-rope of scientific principles, asking myself 'how? why? when? what?', to conclude that someone had misplaced the box having 500 Rs with the box containing 100 Rs, though it was obvious as i received four 500 Rs note and a 100 Rs note which should have been otherwise. I was very happy that i stopped by that ATM on my way home from work, which i frequent very little and made up my mind which shall not be so from now on.
Did u realize 'the good' lost the battle already ? If yes, well.. very good. I did not.
What followed was a long battle in my brain. Although i was elated for the first few hours, 'the good' was building up a mighty fort cemented with compunction. In another few hours, the conscience prick had overcome all other emotions so much so that i hardly had any other feeling. If you are unaware of such battles within you, i need to tell how resilient is 'the bad' to any plot of 'the good'. I feel ashamed to admit that the thought of going back to the ATM to withdraw more money did not escape my mind. At one moment I was busy doing permutation and combinations to arrive on the amount that yielded most profit. As i am quite weak in maths i could still not agree on whether to put my bet on 400 or 900. But the sudden surge of goodwill inside prevented me from taking such a heinous act. The interesting fact is that, contradictions and the balance of the battle never remained permanently with any of the side. It was a fence-sitter.
I could not handle any more of the din in my head. It had started unsettling me. So i decided to do what i used to do as my last resort - calling my father. He had no doubt whatsoever in arriving at a decision and advised me to inform the Bank authorities the very next day. My mind too was clear then. I should have done that a long earlier. I called up a friend of mine whose father was an employee of that bank. His father thanked me many a times for the information and lauded my honesty, which i did not deserve.
The next day, i went to the bank and informed them the reason of my coming, they greeted me warmly and led to the ATM. The shutter was half drawn down, but the doorkeeper allowed me in after a brief discussion with the clerk who had accompanied me. Inside, the ATM manager and a few more employees where having a serious discussion. They thanked me for returning the money. He then pointed to a squatting man and said that poor fellow misplaced the cash. His eyes were all white, pale and tired from a sleepless night. He did not utter a word, but he bowed with praying hands. That stirred me. He was accountable and had to keep money from his pocket else, his job will be at stake. A lady, he said, had informed the bank about the issue the previous evening itself. He also mentioned about the alert message from other branch which i understood was through my friends father. He also added that there was no way to track the persons who withdrew the cash and did not return as it was a mistake of the bank employee.
You will be mistaken if you thought the joust between the two was over. 'The good' continued to be on rampage. It seemed to me as it had time travelled to the past to fight its arch-rival and the result was 'regret'. One has to feel it to understand how difficult the going gets once you reach this stage. I lost track of the count of the battles that were fought and won. A lot of questions were clamoring - 'you should have informed that evening itself' , 'you could have prevented the situation from getting worse' and lots of them more. Many a counter conciliatory remarks too reverberated.
I could not agree more nor can articulate it more convincingly than the legendary director Francis Ford Coppola when he penned for the movie Apocalypse Now - these : " .. there's a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Every man has got a breaking point.. ". These filled my fallen mind.
Many beneficiaries might not have returned the extra cash for sure. I wonder how different the outcome of the encounter is, though it was between the same opponents, for the same cause. I wonder how different the outcome would have been in a different time. The only difference was it was in different spaces, inside different heads. For the lady, the good won the battle and there would have been no other war. In my case, the good was still waging a one-sided war of regret. For those who did not turn up there would have been no war at all. And the question remains for the reckoning...
I suppose it did not incite a supernatural battle between a cruel and wicked villain and a kindhearted, brave, handsome hero. Well, I was talking about the big battle in a congested space - our minds. Some times we don't even realize the battle horns have been blown.
Here is an instance. When i went to withdraw money from the ATM the other day for 900 Rs, i got 2100 Rs. I rechecked the reciept a couple of times to confirm it was not my mistake. According to it, i just withdrew 900. I had to walk on the tight-rope of scientific principles, asking myself 'how? why? when? what?', to conclude that someone had misplaced the box having 500 Rs with the box containing 100 Rs, though it was obvious as i received four 500 Rs note and a 100 Rs note which should have been otherwise. I was very happy that i stopped by that ATM on my way home from work, which i frequent very little and made up my mind which shall not be so from now on.
Did u realize 'the good' lost the battle already ? If yes, well.. very good. I did not.
What followed was a long battle in my brain. Although i was elated for the first few hours, 'the good' was building up a mighty fort cemented with compunction. In another few hours, the conscience prick had overcome all other emotions so much so that i hardly had any other feeling. If you are unaware of such battles within you, i need to tell how resilient is 'the bad' to any plot of 'the good'. I feel ashamed to admit that the thought of going back to the ATM to withdraw more money did not escape my mind. At one moment I was busy doing permutation and combinations to arrive on the amount that yielded most profit. As i am quite weak in maths i could still not agree on whether to put my bet on 400 or 900. But the sudden surge of goodwill inside prevented me from taking such a heinous act. The interesting fact is that, contradictions and the balance of the battle never remained permanently with any of the side. It was a fence-sitter.
I could not handle any more of the din in my head. It had started unsettling me. So i decided to do what i used to do as my last resort - calling my father. He had no doubt whatsoever in arriving at a decision and advised me to inform the Bank authorities the very next day. My mind too was clear then. I should have done that a long earlier. I called up a friend of mine whose father was an employee of that bank. His father thanked me many a times for the information and lauded my honesty, which i did not deserve.
The next day, i went to the bank and informed them the reason of my coming, they greeted me warmly and led to the ATM. The shutter was half drawn down, but the doorkeeper allowed me in after a brief discussion with the clerk who had accompanied me. Inside, the ATM manager and a few more employees where having a serious discussion. They thanked me for returning the money. He then pointed to a squatting man and said that poor fellow misplaced the cash. His eyes were all white, pale and tired from a sleepless night. He did not utter a word, but he bowed with praying hands. That stirred me. He was accountable and had to keep money from his pocket else, his job will be at stake. A lady, he said, had informed the bank about the issue the previous evening itself. He also mentioned about the alert message from other branch which i understood was through my friends father. He also added that there was no way to track the persons who withdrew the cash and did not return as it was a mistake of the bank employee.
You will be mistaken if you thought the joust between the two was over. 'The good' continued to be on rampage. It seemed to me as it had time travelled to the past to fight its arch-rival and the result was 'regret'. One has to feel it to understand how difficult the going gets once you reach this stage. I lost track of the count of the battles that were fought and won. A lot of questions were clamoring - 'you should have informed that evening itself' , 'you could have prevented the situation from getting worse' and lots of them more. Many a counter conciliatory remarks too reverberated.
I could not agree more nor can articulate it more convincingly than the legendary director Francis Ford Coppola when he penned for the movie Apocalypse Now - these : " .. there's a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Every man has got a breaking point.. ". These filled my fallen mind.
Many beneficiaries might not have returned the extra cash for sure. I wonder how different the outcome of the encounter is, though it was between the same opponents, for the same cause. I wonder how different the outcome would have been in a different time. The only difference was it was in different spaces, inside different heads. For the lady, the good won the battle and there would have been no other war. In my case, the good was still waging a one-sided war of regret. For those who did not turn up there would have been no war at all. And the question remains for the reckoning...
