Serving a broke master

 Serving a broke master

This was a true story 🙏

I request readers to desist ‘probing’ into the details 🙏( I should not be disclosing personal details of people, which I had access to 🙏).  My purpose is to share personal experience from real life, where situations were extreme 🙏

An employee of a financially weak enginnering firm lamented in a weak voice : “June. School reopening after summer holidays. Heavy expenses, for books, uniform and term fees for my 2 kids 😭🙏”.

I responded: “you should have planned to save!”

He( visibly annoyed): “ you can afford to sermonise sir. Well paid job, AC office, etc. I am getting my small salary 4 months late! My employer is also broke’’

Me (to further infuriate him😜) : “hey, can you buy me a tumbler of tea?”( In South, it is glass tumbler, not porcelain cups at wayside tea stall)

He ( ego hurt, when already engulfed with money problem 😜) : “Oh, it's a question of just ₹2 … i can buy it👍, come…”( 1997, tea was for ₹2)

We both reached the main gate.

I turned to him, feigning an after thought : Boss, we shall do 1 thing, keep the ₹2 separately for me🙏. Tomorrow we shall have tea”

He nodded.

Next day he sobered a bit, and I exploited it 😜 saying : “next few days only , 1 tea for me … keep aside an additional ₹2 daily”

Now….he grew suspicious 😳. But ₹2 is in his pocket yet, so….no mistrust problem 😜

Time is an element, I turn to my advantage when I decide to exploit somebody’s weakness called “ego” ( financially poor guys are generally more sensitive to being laughed at their poverty 😂). I am glued to him till he succeeds 😜. 

30 days…. ₹60… 

I demanded : “ open a recurring deposit account for 60 per month. Remember, its my tea_money of ₹2 from you, daily 👍. I help you daily at my office. I am your-good-friend. You owe me 1 tea daily”

An year later, the humble ₹2 per day, with cumulative interest, became his ‘margin money’ of 25% for a second hand sewing machine. His wife started earning, using the machine. Another year, they saved enough to buy an extra sewing machine, and his wife's next door lady got a job 😂.

This guy says to me, 2 years later: “Sir( a respect has crept in towards me, a stupid clerk😜)... Sir, now I can even quit my job 👍. My wife is earning enough to finance my family 😂”

Side effects: My dear colleague sitting next, tracked the entire drama, and whispered to me “PSN, I too started that ₹2 per day bijness. An RD account of mine too”. This colleague ‘retained’ the idea for 5 more years, and when we met post_retirement said “PSN, that ₹2….now the total amount is a 5 digit fixed deposit 😂”

I retorted 😡 “little drops of water…makes the mighty ocean”

( What I held back from telling other colleagues was : my 2 cents a day of spiritual practices 😜…  now it is a huge balance of spiritual insight in me, since decades. No paisa involved 🙏)

Just yours,

psn(14 oct 2026)