Greed !!

GREED !

My father-in-law was middle class and was one of the most unlucky souls born on earth. Though he was not blessed with money, and barely scraping to make an existence, he was such a large hearted man, that people recount warmly (he died just a few months before I got engaged) the generosity and hospitality that an unannounced guest always received at his house.

It so happened that as a youth he was placed in such a circumstance that he had to seek out the generosity of the father of the famous Test Cricketer M.L. Jaisimha, a man by the name Lakshmi Narasu, who had come up the hard way. Mr. Narasimha Murthy, my father-in-law, had to seek the financial assistance of Mr. Lakshmi Narasu to further his academic career at Aligarh Muslim University. And later it so happened that when a few years advanced, Mr Lakshmi Narasu asked My F-I-L to support and nurture three elderly persons – an aged sister of Lakshmi Narasu and his two aged parents. Thus it so happened that the three persons, my F-I-L's two parents, wife and five children had to be nurtured.

My F-I-L later lost his job and barely scraped a living. And this is what surprises me. He never reneged on the demands made by his once benefactor. Come hell or high water, his children suffered the pangs of monetary deprivation but the five aged persons were taken care of adequately.

My father-in-law was unlucky and unsuccessful. For some reason, whatever he attempted would crash. Yet he is supposed to have been a lion-hearted man who never held back when he had to take a risk. In the early 1990s, he had a fairly large sized plot with an old house in Seshadripuram, Bangalore. The poor man borrowed a huge sum of money at prohibitive rates of interest to try and develop an apartment complex in that space. Those days the bank rates for loans were around 18% which went up to 22%, so he ended up with a totally losing proposition for the plot he had. Further the flats were all sold cheap. All in all, they ended up losing the plot in a way.

One of the losing investments he made, was a fairly large strip of land that he purchased in the early 1990s in what is now Hosakerehalli. For some reason, though the documents were genuine, the family had not executed the Khata deed. The registration of the land was nevertheless done. All seemed to be in order until a few years ago. It so happened that a prominent Karnataka politician became interested in that strip of land and sought to annex it to other lands he had acquired for a so-called educational institution. The politician – a powerful man, used his power and is presently engaged in the greedy task of grasping more than he really needs even as an impoverished family looks on. The world looks on too!