SWINDLE

‘You miser bum you’d even think miserly!’ my closest friend was showering his immense praise on me. Fed up with the mundane life we were discussing trying something different which would refresh us & provide money as well. Being good at thinking I coined the idea of deceiving common people & earning through it. Actually it would have been the nicest changeover I thought of. With absolutely no risk & high to very high returns. Say, trap a youth convincing him of getting job in say Railways. What it takes to print the letter-head, visiting cards, identity card & make few stamps? What all it takes to fool & deceive a job seeking youth? I can easily swindle him for say fifty thousand bucks. Ten youths a district & so many districts around I see my future is truly bright. To this idea my friend expressed his rather frank opinion about my colossal idea frankly. Over a Wada-Paav & milk mixed black tea he thought swindling say fifty youth for couple of hundred thousands was a miserly act.

Well, I’d considered myself in the act with my forty seven kilogram weight at forty two years of age with obvious spectacles & ageing brittle bones. My friend with his shirt & pants which would bring shame to circus tent, hundred & thirty five kilogram weight & takes hundred & thirty six seconds to get up from the steel chair, I don’t let him sit on wooden chair at my home. We’d to do something wherein we don’t have to do something which we really can’t do say running, getting bitten up in red & blue with the lathis of police etc. Plus with few hundred thousands in the pocket we can easily buy ever thirsty & lusty police, can take care of ever lying lawyers & manage a couple of judges, if at all we get caught. We’d to do something soft.

‘So what the hell you think you dumb?’ I was irritated at him. Since getting such a nice idea in the graying brains takes lot of brilliance. ‘Shut up, just shut up’ he shouted at me, everybody around in that dull, soot smeared ceiling roadside restaurant started staring at us must be thinking, why the thin guy visibly irritating the fat one which is just not good for his own health. Even I considered my merits at fighting physically with him & paper thin chances of winning. We then thought of duping banks with stolen credit card or demand drafts, snatching chains on road & in the running trains, fooling casinos, stealing information from the processing plant or FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) & selling to their competitors. Even we spent time to think on our capacities & abilities of kidnapping kids for hefty ransoms, threatening calls to filthy rich movie men & business men. But both of us were not convinced with the money, thrill & risk associated with the ad(verse)venture. ‘How about hijacking a passenger plane?’ I’m always popping up with the fresh ideas. ‘Even a kid will knock you down with single blow, look at you in the mirror’ my big friend was getting more vocal than he should, with him on the board the plane wouldn’t even take off. Well I gulped my thought with saliva.

‘Have you heard of Albert Einstein & Robert Oppenheimer? My friend chuckled with twinkling eyes’. I couldn’t note what he meant, rather I stared into his eyeball for visible stupidity; otherwise why on earth he’s talking of nuclear physicists while we discuss on something rather serious issue of swindling & minting fast bucks. ‘Look’, he changed his posture on the cracking steel stool at the rusty restaurant leaning almost to my face he revealed his idea sprinkling his saliva on my face. It took me some time to understand him & when I got him, I reached for my purse to get coins to pay at the counter & started walking. He chased & caught me with all his elephantine body & with elephantine efforts. Considering the big & really big bucks involved, we started making blue print of our plot.

It was simple! All we’d to do is to learn more about making of the atomic bomb. Window to the world was open in internet to us. Rest of the missing links was easy to link. For the missing links we’d decided to make a few trips to Pakistan, Iran, Korea, Vietnam & we’d even thought of visiting Iraq but later dropped the idea. Collect the information with some material such as enriched Thorium, Plutonium or any radio active material with bit longer stability. Having collected all this we’d to just get the information passed onto the internet just plainly with no ambiguity.

We’d listed a large number of takers including unstable nations, failing economies who wanted to twist arms of their rich neighbors & obviously if nobody turns up than our very own fixed customer was Osama bin Laden.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar