Reputation

Today I went and hung out with Janardan again, which has basically been weekend routine here in Gujarat. After we got back to his house, I found that 2000 rupees was missing from my wallet. While we were out, the only people left in the house were his parents and three maid-servants who were cleaning in preparation for Diwali. Janardan was really shocked when I told him. 2000 rupees is about £25, which isn't that much. What bothered me was the bad karma the girl (presumably) is creating for herself. Just think if the girl had said "I see you have lots of money. can you give me 2000 please? It's to buy some food for my family, and I'll blow the rest on alcohol 'cos I love getting drunk." Then she gets the good karma of truthfulness and avoiding stealing, and I get the good karma of generosity.

Anyhows, the next day Janardan's mum came into my room, in tears, with a maid-servant who was also in tears. They both blarbed lots of stuff in Hindi with the occasional English word 'reputation' and handed me my 2000 rupees back. I offered 500 back to the girl but they staunchly refused.

When Janardan got back from his early-morning meditation, he explained that one of the maid-servants had brought their relative with them and it was the relative who had taken the money. Jana said that his dad had threatened police action which would have serious consequences - no one would trust the maid-servants any more and they'd all loose their jobs and so on. Seems this panicked the relative into coughing up the money.