Dear,……..,
Namaskar. Yesterday I mentioned about the technician from All India Radio who was selected and sent with me for the training on TV Techniques in Delhi. He was a very interesting person on the staff. I will not name him purposely. He would always come to the office properly dressed with a necktie. He would normally do duties at Transmitter. He was married with two children. He had parents and a newly married younger brother. Before joining the Radio service, he had been working in Air Force. He was an Ex-Serviceman. From his way of life and conversing with him, it appeared that he and his wife had separated out of the family soon after his marriage. He was living in a part of the house of his parents in the city. He also had a habit of consuming liquor (from his army background) On occasions, when he would be on morning shifts, and we would be going to his house for the pickup, he would not even answer ours loud calls from below his room from the lane outside the house. Knowingly he would ignore our calls. In short, he appeared to be mean. His father was old and had a defective leg but he nor his wife appeared to take care of his parents.
When he was selected for a 24-week TV Training course in Delhi along with me, his two children were of school-going age and were probably in grade 1 and 3. He decided to take his family plus two children to Delhi for the duration of the training period. There he got admission for the children in Army School. Halfway through the training, he got afflicted with Jaundice. He became ill and tried multiple treatments, but his condition only worsened. I contacted his brother in Srinagar by phone. He was a junior accountant in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Gulmarg. He came for a few days to Delhi but was not able to help much. In the first week of July, our training was over, and we took the same bus from Delhi to Jammu. Myself and my wife stayed in Jammu for a day or two to spend some time with my elder brother and his family. He and his family continued by bus to Srinagar. On arrival in Srinagar, his health condition deteriorated and his in-laws arranged an emergency consultation with Dr. Ali Jan, a very renowned physician of that time. The doctor saw his condition and he hastened his death by prescribing meat etc. which is a poison for Jaundice a Liver ailment. He was dead within a week of arrival in Srinagar.
The staff attended his funeral. The day after funeral me and my friend Mr. Omkar Nath went to his home to condole the death as it used to be normal in Kashmir. There we found that the show was run mainly by the in-laws with the parents and brother etc. in the background which is very unusual. Just when we were seated in his room, I noticed some special Japanese Make tube lights on the wall. These tube lights were part of our Japanese make Radio Transmitter. The deceased technician appears to have removed these tube lights from the transmitter and taken these to his home for personal use. In short this was a case of theft. We called his brother and asked him to remove the lamps before our other office staff would come and notice it.
I collected money for the family in the office. Before paying his wife, I checked with his brother who informed me that he had borrowed money from his office to finance his trip to Delhi a month earlier to meet his ailing brother. He said that he had to return the money in office failing which he would be punished. I asked him to list out all the expenditure. When I saw the list, I was stunned. He had listed his travel expenses to Delhi to meet his brother, the cost of some clothes purchased for the children, and the expenses for the funeral paid on cremation day. I paid him all the money and the balance to the wife of the deceased. The breakup of the amount paid to his brother somehow got leaked and someone conveyed this to the brother of the wife of the deceased. The brother of the lady came to our office and met me. He wanted a copy of the sheet which had details of the expenses listed by the brother of the deceased. And he sought explanation from me why we had paid money to the deceased’s brother. He wanted to know, why we had paid her less than what we had collected. I told him that we had divided the total collection into two parts and paid one part to the brother (who was holding a minor job himself) of the deceased the amount that he had spent on his brother . He still wanted the list for his information and knowledge. I promised him to give him the details next day. He came next day but I still did not give the detailed sheet.
I did not give him the details fearing that he and his family would blackmail the brother of the deceased, his family and the old parents. This gentleman made half a dozen visits to my office asking for the details of expenses. On each occasion, I asked him to come the next day. He came every day for a week. He would question me in such a way as if I had stolen his money. When he persisted, I told him on the seventh day in a very rough tone to get lost. I added that it was our discretion to distribute the contribution money and we were not obliged to give him the details. That was the last I saw of him demanding the expenditure details. We arranged a job as a clerk in the office for the wife of the deceased. She never reconciled with the family of her husband and did not allow her children to mix with them. I bumped into her brother a number of times in the following years but he never once raised the expenditure list issue again. I met the lady a number of times after that and she always thanked me for arranging fore her a job in office.
Bye.
No comments:
Post a Comment