Loot and scoot

Satish fumbled inside his trouser pocket, obviously looking for something important. Finally, he produced a wad of notes, carefully bound together with a rubber band. Staring straight ahead, he deftly counted the crisp bills and handed them over to me.
"Eight thousand," he said softly, proudly, "... balance, next month." My first instinct was to slide the wad right back and say, "Keep it." But I checked myself in time.Satish was not looking for charity.
He was repaying a soft loan. And proud to be doing so. I would have insulted the businessman in him had I refused the first instalment of his carefully-calculated repayment schedule.
Besides, he was coming to me straight after a meeting with his bank manager, the same one who''d made another, bigger loan available to him. He sheepishly confessed he had defaulted a couple of times last year... but better days lay ahead. He had formally and officially declared himself an entrepreneur.
Here''s the amazing part: Satish is visually impaired. To use an old-fashioned term - Satish is blind. And very smart. He sells handkerchiefs on a suburban railway footbridge.
Sometimes he sells notebooks. But, he sighs resignedly, wily students swoop down and trick him out of a few, managing to steal upto ten in one go, effectively wiping out his profit margins for a week.
When he''s not dealing with wretched petty thieves, he''s bribing local cops demanding a cut from his daily sales. Despite the odds, Satish has self-financed his own high school education, done a course in computers, got his younger sister married (another hefty loan) and is now planning to get married himself. The girl, chosen by his mother, is sighted.
Through the years that I''ve known Satish, I''ve never seen him despair. He''s handled life''s travails and challenges with utmost dignity, even humour. I recall his indignation when he was assigned a PCO in some distant suburb.
He turned it down, saying he''d be out of pocket, given the distance. Within minutes he''d worked out the economics and figured he was better off selling ''kerchiefs on a crowded overbridge.
The do-gooder who''d organised the allocation had been most outraged and had warned, "Watch out for this fellow. Blind people can be really cunning. They make us feel guilty for being sighted."
It''s a reaction I''ve encountered often. I noted the warning and continued my friendship with Satish. One day, he brought me six pastel-coloured scarves. He wasn''t sure what exactly they were, but believed I would find use for them.
"The colours are not gaudy," he emphasised, and I felt myself choking back tears at the sweet irony of a sightless man discussing the hues of pieces of fabric he couldn''t recognise as anything other than large, soft squares.
But this was no ordinary present - it was a special gift bought from the profits of his first big sale. That was five years ago. Today, Satish knows how to negotiate better terms.
That''s clever. But what''s more impressive is the fact that he combines innate shrewdness with honour. An honour that compels him to pay back his loans, no matter what the odds.
Compare Satish''s code of ethics with those of countless businessmen you and I know, who''ve looted banks and others of crores... and scooted. No compunctions, no shame.
Most of us continue to be insensitive, even cruel, to the special needs of special people. We turn a blind eye when defaulters cheat the public of millions. We make the most amazing concessions towards the well-heeled mega-crooks.
Financial institutions bend over backwards to accommodate them. And then there''s Satish. Technically sightless. But Satish has seen something these people haven''t - a higher truth.
Which is why his is a far bigger success story in my eyes than the stories of most award-winning tycoons I know.