This story is of a person who owns a small dosa shop and how a small incident changes his life.
Manjunatha coming from a small village in Tumkur has been working in Bangalore since 7 years. His wife used to sell groundnuts and he used to make knives before they started with the idly and dosa shop.
One fatal day Manjunathas father fell sick back in village and so he had to rush down to meet his father along with his family. All of them left for Tumkur the very same day.
Everything at home went back to normal in a three days time. His father started recovering from the illness. Manjunath had left his shop closed for three days and needed to hurry back as he had spent a lot on his father’s medicines. Also keeping the shop closed for so many days would mean losing customers.
He hurried back to Bangalore after 3days and asked his wife to stay back along with the children at his father’s place to take care of him. Manju arrived home late on Tuesday night and decided to get to work the next day. He woke up early next the following day, as he did not have his wife’s help to prepare the food there was quite a lot of work load on him. He left for the shop at 7 am.
Manjunath reached the shop in 5 minutes from his place only to find the locks on the shutter to his shop broken. His shop was small, just enough t accommodate a dosa stove and a small basin. He opened the shutters just hoping nothing should have gone wrong. However when the shutters opened the stove had gone missing. It came like a shock wave to him. He had already suffered a loss when his shop remained closed 3 days and losing the stove now... he could not have suffered from a greater loss than this. Most of his income depended on selling the dosa and losing the stove only meant 40% reductions in his total earning which meant quite a lot.
When all this took place a lot of crowd had already gathered. Many suggested that he should go and lodge a complaint at the police station. He thought over it and soon lodged a complaint for the same. He waited for 2-3 days after lodging the complaint but no action was taken by the police till then. After all he was just a poor fellow he thought, why the cops would ever bother to investigate.
A few more days passed by. Manjunath had not told his wife about the entire incident as she would have been tensed and also his father was not entirely well yet.
He kept it to himself and carried on with his work as usual though his income now was much less than before. On the same night when Manjunath was selling his last few idly’s he saw two drunken men pass his shop and have a hearty laugh at him. He also recognised them to be the fellows to whom he once refused to sell the knives. He did not find them to be the right people so he had not sold them any knives and was also troubled by them for few days but it had been long since then and nothing grave had really happened after that.
Manjunath did not really pay attention to this he continued with his work and packed up soon to leave for home. On his way back home when it was already quite dark and most of the shops had closed down; however he again heard the laughing noise of the same guys who had passed his shop. Some urge made him go inside the dark lanes and follow the noise. He walked a bit inside to the dark room and a small light burning there he saw the two men sitting there and drinking. He heard them talking something fishy but could not make out what. He learnt after a while that they were talking about teaching someone a lesson. He just shifted his sight to find his own stove placed right in front of those men. He felt so surprised having to see the stove and he had immediately recognised it as it was a bit broken from one corner which had happened during shifting. He screamed and ran towards the stove not realising the consequences there after. The two guys saw him coming and immediately caught hold f him. He felt that his end was about to come. Nothing could save him now. These men no ordinary, they belonged to the local gang of the area and had good contacts with the police as well. He begged the guys to let him go but they refused to. After having a discussion amongst them the guys gave manjunath an option rather a suggestion. They told him that he could have his stove back if only he considered completing one of their works.
Manjunath was not really left with a better option. He needed to buy a new stove for which he had no enough money and if doing a small job meant getting his stove back he did not mind it. He could not have even done anything else as the chaps would not have even left him otherwise. They did not let him leave for the night. Manjunath did not have a slight idea of what e was falling into.
Next day manjunath was brought out of the dark room he had been locked into.
He was handed over a bag and asked to deliver it at a particular place in chickpet near majestic. He was promised that his stove will be returned as soon he completes the job. So he left for the place with a heavy bag in his hand. There was a guy following him so that he could keep an eye on him. Manjunath was not at all comfortable. On the way he thought of having a peep in the bag only to find a lot of cash and packets of drugs. He was scared to death on this sight. On his walk towards the place he had to wait at a cross junction to cross the signal. One of the police men caught him at that site. He could see him sweating and felt something fishy about it. He immediately went there and caught hold of manjunath. It happened all of a sudden leaving no time for manjunath to escape.
He was caught in a big problem. As the bag was not a sturdy one it was easily ripped open by the cop and manjunath was taken in custody for the same. The other guy following had run away from the site by then. When questioned by the police as to what he was planning on doing, Manjunath explained to them that he had nothing to do with the bag, told them the entire story and pleaded them to let him go but all was in vain. No was ready to believe him. When his wife came to know she immediately took the next bus and came to see her husband, however even she could not understand him. She thought her husband had done the job to earn fast money.
Manjunath was in a big legal and financial problem finding no loop hole to come out.
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