Humanity Exists!

As part of my usual weekend chores, today I went out to purchase some wallpapers for my house with my family. After 9 hours of wandering around the city and finalizing the selection, came the moment of bargaining.

Right in front of me was the owner of the shop in his late 50s or early 60s who was doing the itemized calculations on paper. I did some bargaining and after convincing him with light, prolonged arguments related to bulk purchasing, I was able to get a discount of Rs.1000.While the owner was asking his son to do the grand total with a calculator, owing to my Allah's blessing on me to do fast brain calculations I was quickly able to identify that the owner of the shop had made a mistake in the itemized bill costing him Rs.3200. I sat back silently so as to see if he or his son identifies the mistake. But they didn't.

As he asked me to pay the cumulative price of the wallpapers, I took the opportunity to hint him at the mistake in the bill. He asked me where was it and I pointed it out. He suddenly murmured to himself "Allah... Wah Jee".

As I paid him the total price, he asked his son to return the balance. Even though the original balance was Rs.1000, he emphasized to his son twice "Beta Rs.2000 ropay dena mujhe". While I was thinking that he is going to make a second mistake, he returned me Rs.1000 saying "Yeh apke baqi Rs.1000". I took that with thanks and as I reached out to my pocket, he handed me another note of Rs.1000 saying "Yeh me apko khud discount kr rha hun apni marzi se kyun ke apne mujhe mera nuqsan hone se bachaya hay". That moment felt like living one of the story books that are taught to little kids. A moment of high value.

Even though I was the one bargaining earlier to save some money, I could have saved Rs.3200 more while making sure that he and his son wouldn't ever realize it. But the only thing on my mind was that bargaining is my right but cheating is not. Allah would make me pay this money back with interest in terms of illness, misfortunes, theft etc.

On the other side, the owner could have just thanked me for pointing out the mistake and get away with it, rightly so. But even then while he was trading with me, he traded with Allah. On my way back home, I was amazed by the fact that we both probably had left our house in the morning with a selfish intent to earn/save more money but we ended up selflessly profiting each other. I smiled and thought:
*** "This part of my life... This little part... is called happiness" *** :)