Donations to temples can't placate Gods

He was a small-time goldsmith living with his family in one of the single room houses on the outskirts of a densely populated city. During wedding and festival seasons, he was much sought after with orders from families far and wide for making gold ornaments as he had a good workmanship.

Together with a swell in the number of orders over a period of time, his greed for wealth also grew no end. He began adulterating the precious yellow metal and thus diddling his customers who had placed tall orders for the marriage of their daughters.

Fraudulently raking in a lot, he bought a reach-me-down sedan and was using it on his outings with his wife and children.

Luck however ran out for the jeweller as his favourite customers smelt a rat in the purity of his products. A miller with a golden thumb, he was deceitfully getting his share of gold from each piece of ornament he produced.

His shortcut to a wealthy life turned transient. May be, conscience pricking his mind acutely, he donated a sizeable chunk of his ill-gotten wealth to a temple in his locality daydreaming to get solace from his remorse of swindling the dosh gullible people had paid him in good faith.

Startled I stood at the sight of a marble frieze with his name engraved in it in bold letters at a temple I once visited in his neck of the wood.

Almost a decade later, I stumbled upon the same goldsmith sitting on the back seat in his car, with all the digital extremities in both the hands stiff and bent inwards at the tip.

Sure, it was leprosy that had severely affected him. The measure of his deceitful deeds straight flashed through my mind.

A realtor with good spiel in his business was successful in getting well-to-do people for buying or selling houses and house-construction plots. He had an extraordinary knack of satisfying his customers with only the bright side of every property, concealing their seamy side.

Trusting his words interested parties would like a shot into the deal and readily buy or sell the property only to suffer heavy loss later. Within scarcely seven years after landing the job, he made a killing of his business so much so that he became the proud owner of a palatial building within the 'metro.

Alas! Curtains came down his heyday with the sudden demise of his middle-aged wife in a road accident. Within scarcely a couple of years the realtor who was wallowing in money was affected with tuberculosis.

A patient of the deadly disease, he donated a good part of his ill-gotten wealth to temples and charity homes. Soon getting wind of the miserable condition of his health his two sons living elsewhere dashed to him for - hold your breath - not taking care of him but playing ducks and drakes with all his immovable property.

No donations made in temples to any extent can be propitiation for the acts of cheating one inflicts upon others, both the men learnt the hard way.

H Narayanan, Bengaluru