A Tale of Two Credit Cards!

Such in-a-soup stories need to be told, because they mostly are about all those faceless people who normally have no voice. It doesn’t matter if the stories were my personal ones or somebody else’s. As you must be aware a writer or a storyteller has the choice of being the narrator in the first person or in the third person, and in post-modern storytelling even in the second person. Well, right? As you also must’ve been aware all the time that several essential services like banking were spared during the pandemic lockdowns, and as far as services at the bank branches are concerned the pandemic hit them real hard with thousands of their staff members getting the infection leading to manpower shortages which was really unfortunate. However, the pandemic had a definitive role in making online transactions a way of life, forcing even the traditionally manual-obsessed customers go for online activities. Therefore, when I discovered a bank failing even in that minimum of online presence I had to feel disgusted. This brings me to the first credit card.

 

I’d been having a credit card for years issued by that particular bank where I didn’t have an account. During the first national lockdown the bank literally went into a stupor: not informing about or updating the transactions; not generating online monthly statements and mailing those promptly; contacting them through the helpline was also a wasted exercise as no one really attended the calls. All these created a total blackout for me as regards my card. To make matters worse the bank, one of the worst and confirmed misers in the industry, kept on sending useless text promos like offering offensive cashbacks of 50 or maximum 100 bucks for a transaction of over 20k bucks and like offering to increase their consistently miserable credit limit by only a few thousand bucks.

 

One day I was caught up in such a severe fit of rage, also accentuated perhaps by the monotonous stay-home syndrome that I cut up the credit card in as many as possible pieces and threw those into the dustbin. After the act I mailed them a request to close my card account which compulsorily involved another clumsily manual process: that they don’t take closure requests online or on phone and I have to log in to their net banking site, type my request in their form, have to take a printout and send it by post to them as if I were a free bird during the lockdown. My previous experiences in their net banking were horrible: they never save my credentials and passwords; and so, every time I try to log in I have to rediscover myself and create new and newer user IDs and passwords. I gave it up.

 

To my horror a solitary statement appeared informing me that I had unpaid balances. Furious, I emailed them again, asking them why they didn’t close my account and how on earth was I to make the payment as I no longer had the full 16-digit card number with me. Like all other banks they wanted their money back at any cost, and therefore, one executive found time to send me an email asking me to make the payment using a temporary 16-digit number generated for the same purpose. I made the payment, reiterating my request to close my account as I couldn’t possibly use it without having either the card or its number.

 

For the next one year I forgot about the card, but at times feared that the bank might again charge me the annual fee. And then the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) new guidelines on credit cards that are to be effective from the 1^st of July this year came just in time, and one of which guidelines say that a bank has to close a credit card account that is not used for more than a year. Accordingly, a jubilant ‘me’ receives a text message from the bank giving me a notice period of one month to try renewing my card or the card would cease to exist after that! I give three cheers to the RBI! Credit card users must also know now that as per another guideline a bank can no longer insist on a manual application for a closure request and has to complete the closure after a telephonic or online request within seven days to avoid paying a daily penalty to the customer.

 

The second credit card is of an existential kind! A bank where I had to open a savings account for some reasons offered me a credit card, full of discounted offers and lifetime free. However, the offer from a polite lady executive of the bank came on telephone when I was stranded out of town for the first lockdown. Therefore, I also politely informed her that since I was in another town I wouldn’t possibly be able to receive the card at my registered address. To that, even more politely, the lady asked me for the new address and noted it down with painstaking care, doubly assuring me that the card would arrive at my new address.

 

A fortnight later, though, I got a message from the courier that they missed me at that registered address. The card was never delivered even after I came back to my registered address. However, the offers continued to flourish in my phone, mails and the bank’s net banking site. The bank was caught in their own web of half-truths when one of their executives phoned me offering me a personal loan on the credit card that never existed, and I grabbed the opportunity with my both hands and asked him a simple question, ‘Where is my card, my dear provider?’. He took it in with a remarkable restraint and assured me all the needful would be done.

 

Accordingly, a representative arrived at my home and the application process was done one more time. I got all the communication as regards the ETA, so to say! That card too never arrived, even after a full year. However, the card still exists in my net banking account and in terms of a plethora of insistently luring offers. So then, this is the story about the second credit card that I cannot use even virtually.

Movie Kimi: A Slick Thriller Capturing The Pandemic Lockdown Times!

For the first time I have had the pleasure of watching a movie that strives to capture the pandemic or lockdown-era hassles and problems. Filmmakers the world over in a film industry that has taken the pandemic hit most painfully, wouldn’t like their heroes or heroines masked-up after trying hard to realize the movie at last. However, in this Hitchcockian a thriller titled Kimi that was released by HBO MAX on 10^th February and now streaming on Amazon Prime Video too, we find the female protagonist masked up in the most crucial scenes outside of her home in Seattle. The movie is directed, edited and photographed by Steven Soderbergh, a renowned filmmaker of Hollywood who, at 26 years of age, became the youngest director to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival for his debut film Sex, Lies and Video Tapes (1989) and the film was both a commercial success and critically acclaimed; he earned the Oscar for Best Director for Traffic(2000); and then created the immensely popular The Ocean’s Franchise starting with The Ocean’s Eleven (2001). It is also heartening trend to note that such a stalwart director should make movies for streaming platforms. Kimiis produced by New Line Cinema, Warner Bros Pictures.

 

The story of Kimiis grounded entirely on the female protagonist Angela Childs, played brilliantly by Zoe Kravitz, whose agoraphobia gets aggravated by a previous assault (not shown in the movie), the pandemic and lockdowns, her continuous work-from-home as a tech executive with only her laptop, mobile and other gadgets for company. She panics and shudders at the idea of going out of home; she works on her gadgets, particularly ordering the Kimi for every action, the smart digital assistant like that of Siri in Apple and Alexa in Amazon; she does workouts, picks her ailing teeth daily and gazes often out of the window taking in the movements of persons inside various surrounding apartments; she talks to her mother or co-workers virtually; and invites her boyfriend cum neighbor Terry (Byron Bowers) for an occasional fling. She violently resists any request from anyone asking her to visit them, let it be her dentist or colleagues. Her lonely existence goes on till something happens that forced her to come out of home.

 

The first scene of the movie shows the CEO (Bradley Hasling, played by Derek DelGaudio) of a tech corporation called Amygdala, interviewed by a TV channel for his forthcoming IPO. He explains the smart speaker device of Kimi that works on voice commands and involves human monitoring of the incoming data streams from Kimi users. The CEO says that the device is working very well among the users and that he expects millions from the initial IPO issue.

 

Angela Childs works for Amygdala and monitors all the incoming streams from users taking further measures whenever necessary to improve the experience. One day she picks up a stream where loud music is playing, but in-between she hears a women’s screams. She starts editing the stream, minimizing the music and concentrating on the voices. Getting convinced that that stream could possibly involve a violent sexual crime against the woman she talks to a co-worker and wants him to give her the full streams of that user. The co-worker gives her an admin code with which she could enter the data zone of Amygdala and get what she wanted.

 

Angela succeeds in getting all the Kimi recordings and the final video stream, and is horrified to find a murder of the user woman being committed. Shaking all over she speaks to her boss, the CEO, for necessary action. He tries to evade and refers her to a senior Amygdala executive Natalie Chowdhury (played by Rita Wilson). After Angela’s several attempts to reach her, finally Natalie calls her and convinces her to come over to her office, further assuring her that her disclosure would be done in the presence of an FBI officer. So, Angela moves out of home at last and what happens afterwards is a sequence of events leading to a shattering climax.

 

Zoe Kravitz portrays the character of Angela Childs as effectively as Soderbergh visualizes. She behaves weird and shouts often indoor; shakes all over violently in sudden panic; is extremely fastidious like taking out the pillow covers and bedsheet in the very presence of her boyfriend Terry after the act was done; and while outdoor she is masked up and covered from head to foot, walks with her head lowered, stops suddenly in corners, walks like in dazed huddle. However, the string of terrifying happenings awakens her energy and she fights for survival gallantly. Soderbergh did not make any special attempt to keep the suspense element sacrosanct, because during the very beginning of the film he reveals a vital clue for the viewers to remember.

 

The storytelling or the antics of the protagonist is entirely convincing and realistic. As is often observed by critics, suspense/mystery thrillers with a female protagonist are always convincing as to her acts or heroics while a male protagonist is always led to do the heroics of a different level, making us wonder at his superhero abilities. Steven Soderbergh, always committed to avant-garde arthouse approach despite his typically Hollywood subjects, delivers his punches everywhere in this pacey thriller, from the lingering camera work that captures his tacky character in the rather spacious apartment to the outdoor scenes where the hand-held camera just freaks out.

 

In all, Kimi is immensely watchable and enjoyable. It also satirically brings out the increasing dependence of modern humans on gadgets, devices and various digital platforms. All the keys-tapping, searching, surveillance and tracking which have been an inseparable part of almost all Hollywood films for quite a while now, are also here in this film; but with a kind of emphasis that can be safely called a warning.

A Lockdown Remix Experience In Peoples’ Land Kolkata!

If we can assume that people are already familiarized with the concept of lockdown as it has been more than a year since the national lockdown was imposed in India in March 2020, on the basis of this assumption we can go on to opine that the present version of the lockdown in Kolkata and the state of West Bengal has been a remix. Of course, the local media here has been terming this as only a ‘near-lockdown’, and we also know the kind of ‘mixed’ approaches adopted by various states of India to lockdown, but the experience here is unique and not related to most of the other states. We have decided to call it a remix, because under this process the old is often presented in a new getup to attract and excite the common people, and the state lockdown here has been a genuine remix with continuous tweaking to make it more and more user-friendly for the larger interests of the common people of West Bengal, particularly the state capital of Kolkata.

 

Yes, peoples’ interests. Nothing moves or gets implemented here that happens to adversely affect the prospects of the people in their easy and smooth going lifestyle—let it be their financial interests or social or cultural. It is extremely difficult here to increase local train, metro or bus fares, even when these become inevitable, because this would increase the cost of living in a significant way for the common people, and it has been seen that government after government avoided, as far as possible, taking the risks of going against the interests of their citizens. Similarly, posh or even moderately comfortable and convenient public restaurants/bars/eating joints are extremely rare here, because once modern comforts are provided the prices will have to be increased which would severely affect the footfalls; and therefore, you’d find here only street-side food or tea stalls, tented eating places and makeshift eating joints with almost no seating arrangements. I had written about my predicament on various occasions in this city when I was desperate to find a place to seat and take my food in relative comfort. However, my determination of ‘No Eating Standing’ only proved to be my greatest detriment.

 

Perhaps the renaissance of Indian literature that primarily started here during the British period made the people here highly educated, liberal and very conscious of their rights—political, social and intellectual, and the long rule of the Left for seven consecutive terms from 1977 to 2011 made them socialistic and believers of equal right and justice in society. Thanks to all these the state and its city of joy remained a peoples’ land of for the people, of the people and by the people. The latest example is there for all to behold: the people here thwarting the mightiest of political parties from grabbing political power here as the strategy and policies of that party never suited the politically conscious people here. Of course, in a modern perspective such people-centric policies do affect the development process adversely and this has indeed harmed the state. However, this is not the forum to discuss this issue and we must return to our basic subject—the lockdown syndrome here.

 

Lockdown was finally announced in West Bengal on the 15^th of May 2021 with first phase starting 16^th to 30^th May. It looked to be quite strict: only essential local markets to be open for just 3 hours during 7-10am, non-essential shops not to open anytime of the day and people not allowed loitering around in the streets after 9 pm, apart from all other closures of malls, cinema halls and so on. And then the tweaks: all sweet shops to remain open 10 am-5 pm; all Sareeand jewellery shops to function from 12 noon to 3 pm; and no supervision about non-essential shops like paan-cigarette shops or street-side tea/snack stalls also opening during the 7-10 am window. The state government does have sound economical considerations: small traders and vendors cannot be allowed to suffer like they did in the national lockdown; sweet-making is arguably the biggest industry in Bengal employing a huge population and common people here cannot exist without what they consider items with even medicinal values; similarly, Saree and ornaments are the traditional requirements of the people, apart from the huge numbers employed in these trades too.

 

As expected, the lockdown was extended till 15^th June. Although the basic windows of various openings were maintained the state government threw open one more avenue: all non-essential shops that were not allowed to open during the first phase could now function during 12 noon to 3 pm slot. The catch in this is that it is kept ambiguous if the shops functioning between 7 to 10 am could get one more business chunk in the new slot. Thanks to this ambiguity, almost all the shops are now doing effective business from 7 am to 3 pm with some, like sweet shops, even extending till 8 pm as there is not enough police intervention.  

 

As far as the Lives Vs Livelihood and the economy debates go the state government seems to be sticking to the peoples’ interests even under extraordinary circumstances; it is difficult to choose the right from wrong here. However, risks are being taken; there is no doubt about that. Fortunately, West Bengal was spared from an explosion of infections during the first wave and in the second wave too so far so good. When the first lockdown was imposed here there were around 19000 daily infections (nearly 4000 in Kolkata) and about 150 daily deaths; since the lockdown the figures have come down to around 5000 (less than 1000 in Kolkata) and less than 100 respectively. We hope the optimism and the spirit of the people hold good eliminating the virus altogether in near future as there seems to be little prospect of one more extension of the lockdown beyond 15^th June.

Why No Lockdown In West Bengal Or Still No National Lockdown?

A stupendous election victory against the might of the national ruling party; Didi Mamata Bannerjee installed for the third term as Chief Minister of  West Bengal; and the immediate promise to take the fight against the COVID-19 virus in its deadly second wave head on. But, in the days that followed the state government had not shown any real intent to take on the promised fight, deciding only to augment a little the earlier state administration order that was announced a day prior to the counting of votes on 2^nd May 2021, to shut down restaurants, cinema halls, malls, gyms, sport complexes and so on, and to schedule the business hours of the general markets.

 

The order came the very day of the oath-taking ceremony, no doubt a very subdued affair due to the situation, of Mamata Bannerjee as the new Chief Minister; but, unfortunately, the new order yields precious little in terms of strict curbs or a most-preferred complete lockdown. The order follows largely the same format of the previous order except for the rescheduling of the business hours of the general markets, completely stopping the local train services with immediate effect, reducing the trains of the Metro railway by half, buses to run at half-capacity and ordering all government/private offices at 50% attendance. These measures are far from what is actually desired considering the COVID spread in the state, mostly due to the 8-phase state elections. We will see why.

 

First, the daily timings of the general markets are from 7 to 10 in the morning and 5 to 7 in the evening other than the essential shops/stores like the chemists and the groceries which are open as usual, and the jewellery shops from 12 noon to 3 pm; but in actual practice, as observed, all essential/non-essential shops manage to remain open throughout or at best are ‘allowed’ the concession of overshooting the closing hours regularly. An average citizen of any age can easily move out of home, travel from end to end of the city, crowd the market freely during the ‘general’ hours or in the ‘essential’ hours or in the ‘jewellery’ hours and can gorge on street food available on the stalls about which the order is not specific or for that matter, about all other vendors selling anything. This defeats the purpose of the stay-home doctrine, so crucial to break the chain of infections.

 

Second, some of the other measures are contradictory: all offices are to work with 50% attendance, but if local trains are discontinued, metro trains restricted and buses at half-capacity passengers, then how the office-goers are to travel to the workplaces, which means there would be inevitable crowding in the metro trains and in the buses. Not to speak of the commuting needs of the countless businessmen, traders and vendors. Masking norms are mostly being followed in Kolkata and other major cities of the state, but it’s a tough job to enforce the controls in semi-urban and rural areas. Besides, the social distancing norms have been compromised everywhere thanks to the half-hearted measures.

 

Lastly, although the daily COVID-19 cases have risen slowly from around 17000 to around 19000 in the last few days, we had seen rapid rise from around 1000 cases to over 15000 daily cases during the later election period, and our point is that the slow trend in the last few days cannot be justification for liberal norms, for the dangerous variants of the virus can rise exponentially or even explode anytime like in the states of Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh. Therefore, it must be said emphatically that the state government is playing with the lives of the people of the state, and waiting for the cases to explode for imposing lockdown is very risky, considering how people have still been dying due to lack of oxygen, lack of medical facilities and over-stressing of the health infra all over the country.

 

For India as a whole, national lockdown was imposed on 25^th March 2020 with hardly a four-hour notice, when the daily infections were just in a few hundreds, concentrated in Maharashtra and Kerala. Well, this is not to contest the decision to lockdown the country, for in the global perspective and the experience of many countries it was deemed necessary. Data analysts were extrapolating at that time that without lockdown the infections and the deaths would have been in hundreds of thousands. This is exactly our point.

 

While the first pandemic peak in India, reached mid-September 2020, was just above 97000 cases a day and deaths around 1000 a day, the present numbers are more than 4,00,000 daily cases and 4000+ fatalities. The 4-Lakh mark was crossed about ten days back, after which the figures were fluctuating between 3.5 to over 4 Lakh, giving rise to false hopes of the second pandemic peak reached; however, some experts maintain that the peak is expected mid-May or end of May this year. Therefore, it is a valid question to ask: why still no national lockdown? The scenario has been getting bizarre with the states arbitrarily announcing partial or full lockdowns, weekend lockdowns or mini lockdowns whenever they desire, except for the most disciplined state of Maharashtra where the lockdown and anti-COVID strategy has seen the positive results.

 

In fact, a whole lot of medical experts, scientists and international agencies have been urging India to impose national lockdown since over a fortnight. The Government of India is not listening perhaps for the blues of the earlier lockdowns in terms of economic devastation. We say that the damage done last year is due more to lack of planning and haphazard unlocking than the failure of lockdown as a strategy. No doubt, lockdowns are no solutions, but they can definitely break the chain of infections and save lives by forcing people to stay at home. Further, experts believe that there has been much under-reporting in the numbers of daily infections and deaths, some saying that daily deaths must be around 25000 to create that kind of pressure on the crematoriums, the round-the-clock burning pyres all over the country being witness to the immense human tragedy unfolding. At the moment the most important things to do are to prevent more deaths, de-stress the health sector and ensure regular supply of oxygen; and to achieve that a national lockdown is a must, which, experts maintain, has to be of at least of a two-week duration.

The Lockdown Roti!

From January of the year called 2020 onwards we had been constantly getting reports of the havoc created by the SARS-Cov-2 or the COVID-19 virus in various pockets of China. From February of the same year stray cases were being reported from some parts of India and from the month of March cases were on an unmistakable rise, particularly in the states of Kerala and Maharashtra. We were also hearing about the dangerous spread in several European countries, and we even saw on television how normal ebullient parts of countries like Italy and Spain were looking like ghost cities because of the lockdown. But somehow, at that point of time neither the Indian authorities nor the public took it seriously and perhaps was not aware of the incredibly fast human-to-human transmission that the virus was capable of. Not surprising at all, because even the World Health Organization did not know much at that time. Lockdown was also a novel concept for us and many thought that lockdown was not a realistic measure for a vastly populated country like India where a huge chunk of the population were daily wage earners (in fact, this reality led to the blackest chapter in the Indian lockdown history). So, hardly anybody was surprised when we were headed for Mumbai in Maharashtra by mid-March; we had to go there because of some important personal work.

 

Things were mostly normal in March 2020 except for the closure of schools and colleges. As we reached the Kolkata airport the activities were as usual except for the fact that it was not crowded as earlier and the flight was half-empty. Wearing of masks was not considered essential at that time, and there was a school of thought that healthy people never needed the masks. Anyway, we were given special seats on the plane with free food without any extra cost. At arrival we found the Mumbai airport exceptionally empty and even eerie, but there was no screening, and quarantine was not even heard of as a preventive measure till then.

 

Things started unfolding very fast from late March 2020. National Lockdown was announced from the 25^th of March, and stay-home became the only option available. Compulsory wearing of masks, hand sanitization, thermal checks and social distancing became the norms. As the months rolled by we were getting concerned about our locked home in Kolkata. As the much-delayed COVID-19 peak finally was reached by mid-September and cases started falling from October onwards we started making plans for the journey back, from the month of November. But thanks to various domestic reasons other than the pandemic the plans were getting postponed again and again. The escalation of cases happening in Kerala from February 2021 which was later picked up by Maharashtra made us act immediately as one more lockdown was staring at us.

 

Finally, as it happened, we returned exactly after one year. Arriving at our building I was scared to unlock the house, not knowing what to expect or find inside. We had no experience in our lifetime of having a house locked up for one full year and then coming back. However, everything looked in place as we moved around inside the rooms. Except for a layer of dust, which was only normal, there was not much disorder, and there was no sign of fungus taking over. Even the spider webs were noticeable only in the closed window seals.

I entered the kitchen, a crucial place that always needs to be activated at the earliest. Fortunately, everything looked to be in place here too. Of course, all the food items and cereals left behind were all beyond expiry and smelling. With a healthy thought building up within me about making a steaming cup of tea as soon as possible I spotted a hot case neatly placed in a corner of the kitchen slab. As much out of curiosity as out of habit I lifted the lid. And lo! A roti stared back at me!

 

Good heavens! The roti looked as if it were made only a little while back. It looked perfectly normal, even with the blackish spots or creases that materialize on both sides while cooking it on a hot tawa intact; no blackening otherwise or nets of enveloping fungus. It sort of beckoned at me: one year or not, you can still have me if you want! How that roti got forgotten was something we could never hope to establish.

 

Well, we had been telling our friends about this wonder, and everyone was heartily surprised, some calling it a miracle. Okay, air could not infiltrate the container, but normally a roti hardens and blackens out in about three to four days, wherever may it be kept. My wife had still been preserving it in its wonder-case, for how long I wouldn’t know! Crux of the matter being that the lockdown or the pandemic had no impact on this robust roti!

The Life Shiner!

My most used pair of shoes needed a polish very badly. The shoe-color container dried up long back. In the prolonged lockdown period, it was not possible to visit a shoe store and could not order online as well as it was not an essential item. Even after the unlock had gradually widened I didn’t think of venturing out due to the transport hassles. Instead, I started looking for a shoe-shiner shop on my customary evening walks, but found that most of those shops were yet to reopen. Even that lone shoe-polish guy sitting on the roadside with a box was missing.

 

On my walk that evening I changed my normal route, and started looking closely around as I walked on. Luckily, on a solitary corner of a by-lane that branched off to my left from the main road I found a shoe-shiner shop. I marched towards it feeling like a victorious commander. But as I neared my target I had to stop on my tracks. A lady, well clad in ordinary clothes, was sitting there bent over something that she seemed to be stitching.

 

It was an unusual sight. In my lifetime I never encountered or saw a lady shoe-shiner. Now, I hesitated even to ask her if polishing was done there, forget about getting my shoes polished by a woman. Not done, I just thought.

 

Seeing me standing there uncertainly the lady looked up at me and asked what was the matter. Her matter-of-fact tone assuaged my escapist mood, and so I had to answer her,

“Is shoe polishing done here?”

“Yes, sure!” she immediately offered me the pair of rubber slippers that served as an interim arrangement to wait upon.

 

I started taking off my shoes, albeit unwillingly and feeling somewhat ashamed of myself, handed the pair to her and stood on the slippers. And looked around rather sheepishly.

 

She got busy with the pair expertly and dexterously. Presently I heard her murmur something. As if prompted by my still apologetic mind I immediately asked her if anything was the matter. The lady shook her head ever so slightly, and with an imperceptible smile, perhaps, still immersed in her work. Not happy with her response, I leaned towards her and asked again, “Any problem, behenji (sister)?”

 

This time she did look up at me, but indicated something that I failed to understand. She got back to her work and murmuring, now, it could be called chatting.

 

Then it dawned on me. She had been talking on her mobile phone all the time, even before I approached her. But I failed to detect the phone or the headphones anywhere around her, even under the numerous folds of her dress starting from the head covering. Perhaps, she resorted to the discretion to all her tasks smoothly and simultaneously, not taking the risk of shooing off or distracting the potential customers. She must be taking full care of her home and all members of the family while doing the job not exactly cutout for her, I decided. And my mind raced.

 

Hard-working ingenious people! nothing can ever bog them down, not even the most distressing times like the lockdown and the drying-up of all sources of earning. Nothing can ever derail them from their life struggles, howsoever hard, painful and hopeless at times. Instead, they’ll carry on with full-family spirit or the community spirit, helping and complementing each other in all kinds of odd jobs, and most significantly, go on enjoying the small pleasures of life and the joy of togetherness. No job is lowly for them, any work is just work, and work is always worship for them. Not like us, the cantankerous, delicate and the ever-complaining lot! Getting panicky and wanting to escape at any inconvenience or at the slightest hint of a problem!

 

I in my mind saluted her indomitable spirit and the love for life, and in fact, I wanted to bow down to her in true admiration. But that would be more embarrassing for her than for me if at all, I decided again.

She finished her work and handed me the pair back. I very much wanted to pay her more than the bill, but decided against it instantly. They always have the great asset of self-respect, and know how to keep it.

I resumed my walk happily and in a very positive frame of mind, humming a good tune cheerfully.