Reading the newspaper in the morning is a good habit in general. But it can also be very depressing. You open the paper to find “Bombing kills many…”, “Mishap in train…”, “Scam exposed…”, “One year old dies…”, “Young girl raped…” and I don’t feel like reading any further.
But one report in it had a completely opposite effect on me. It went like this: “In an astonishing turn of events …, burglars returned over 70 sovereigns of gold jewellery along with an apology note on the door step of a doctor’s house …” It was not a very important piece of news but it caught my attention. It made me smile and wonder what made those burglars, who in general have no moral obligations other than to “make haste with the loot before they catch you”, to return the stolen objects and also add an apology note. Now that just caught me off-guard.
I started wracking my brains over the real reason behind this. Surely the world could not have turned good all of a sudden. I was sceptical and you can’t blame me for it. Deep down, we all are. May be they robbed the wrong house (hey, I said may be!) or maybe one of them turned it in without the other’s knowledge. Whatever it was, those thieves definitely need to be appreciated.
In a world that is brimming with tragedies, I was finally about to lose hope on mankind (with exceptions, of course). But these burglars, or should I call them good men, made me look at the simpler aspects of life. Things can always be made right. To me, it surely was an astonishing turn of events.
ANJANA SHEKAR, B.E. graduate
