Sodexho bhi chalta hai ...

In the age of credit cards and a well distributed network of ATMs, it isn't necessary to keep more than 100 -200 bucks in your wallet, or so we thought till this happened. After a great lunch and an awesome dessert, we tanked up the car, bought comfortable Osho chappals and my friend and I were on our way home from KP. Now after spending so much, either by Credit Card or cash, we were left with close to around 80 bucks between us and we didn't bother to withdraw money thinking that this much money was good enough if we landed in an emergency like a car breakdown or something like that. However we did not think of this emergency though.

Pune is a strange city. How much ever I may love the city, I always hate it for its roads (if there are any) or traffic management. An apt example is this very strange signal which turns amber and green both at the same time. Ideally, only one colored light should be ON at any given time for any signal. But this strange signal while changing from green to amber, had both green and amber lights on. How cool, isn't it? Had we known the aberrant nature of this signal, this wouldn't have happened.

So we were in the car, in a gleeful mood, listening to the local radio station, commenting on how hot the actress in the song was and we came across this signal. Now, this signal was showing two colors as per its behavior - amber and green, and we saw vehicles zooming past us, we thought probably its 'GREEN' and as obedient citizens, we followed the traffic rules and crossed the signal. Just as we were on the other side, a traffic policeman asked us to get to the side. Again as obedient citizens, we stopped at the side and believed that this would be regular license / PUC checking types and thought we should co-operate. But the policeman started claiming that we had broken traffic rules and that we should pay a fine of 200 bucks. We argued about the funny signal and how were we supposed to know the right behavior and all, but he wouldn't budge. Now, we didn't think of this incident as a possible emergency!

Now we just had 80 bucks and no ATM around. Surely our police force is still not that advanced to swipe credit cards. We were pleading that we just had 80 bucks and a pair of Osho chappals - that was all the wealth we had at that time. And also we weren't willing to pay 200 bucks for a faulty signal. The policeman finally said - 'I'll leave you if you pay me 100. Not a penny more, not a penny less. I won't even give you an official ticket. Slip in a 100 buck note and I'll let you go.' We kept on showing him our empty wallets - 'Sir, see between the two of us we just have 77 bucks.' He peeped into our wallets and said - 'What is this?' pointing to some paper chits. My friend took them out and said - 'Sir, these are Sodexho passes. You can use them to buy things at food malls, select restaurants, grocery stores and more. Our company gives us these passes as a part of our ....' He stopped him in between and said 'Ok, Ok.. I know. I have used them.' We were surprised that the government has also started giving Sodexho passes to its employees. Not till he said - 'Cash nahi toh Sodexho bhi chalega (If you don't have cash, even Sodexho passes will do)'. We were zapped! We were stunned at the desperation of a traffic officer to make an extra buck at any cost. We hardly used Sodexho passes anywhere and our passes used to always accumulate at the end of every month. We could have very well given him the passes and got rid of them. But we didn't.

Again as responsible citizens, we decided to take the ticket. My friend sat in the car while I walked in search of an ATM. Finally found one around 500m away, withdrew money, came back and gave him the cash. The policeman looked at us with expressions of surprise / anger / disdain or a hybrid of all these. We took the ticket and drove off expecting that this money would go in the government account and probably be used to repair this signal rather than giving Sodexho passes to the policeman who would have bought a shampoo from the supermarket or feasted at a nearby restaurant.

Jaago Re!!!