A relentless stand off against evil. An endurance of hardships earned. A true story of a man and his crusade against bribery
Basim Amin Bazaz
A heart wrenching tale; that is what almost every file stuck in a government department is linked to. The story of ‘My friend Gashu’ and his file is no different. Gashu`s fundamental about life is simple: what is wrong is wrong. You man cook any number of justifications, you may go up and down as many mountains as you like; what is wrong can never become right. He does not like the idea of bribery. Rather, he loathes it.
He despises it to the levels that the very thought of it sent pangs of fury through his skull. The idea of bribes, the idea of someone demanding it, the idea of someone offering it; all these send him into a state of woeful tizzy. Needless to say, so does the idea of someone acceding when pressed for it!
Gashu`s first taste of a government office had proved nothing short of awful. Fostering his red hot ideas, he had found himself walking into an ammunition dump. The result: an eminent bang. He had been demanded bribe to get a routine job done. His stomach had churned and his pit had blasted. He had managed to keep the explosion within himself, for the fear that its outburst may send the hopes, if any, of his file being processed, into the dungeon of despair forever. He, however, had refused to bribe them, outrightly. He had not chickened away from giving the clerk a small lecture either.
The evils of bribery – had been the topic of the lecture. Gashu`s unique way of sermonizing had left the clerk fuming; in disgrace and shame at the same time. He had tightened teeth and clenched his fists in retaliation, indicative that he was on the brink of tearing Gashu`s file to shreds. This had prompted Gashu to leave, however, determined to come back again. And back he had gone, only to be hurled from one desk to another and back to the first one, in promise of the needful action. However he had not lost hope. He knew he would be rewarded soon.
Gashu knew perfectly well, that acceding to someone`s ghastly demands of bribe, made you an accomplice to the crime. He also knew that it only helped in promoting the evil. If he paid them, it would embolden them and then they would certainly demand it from subsequent people who approached; just as they had brazenly demanded it from him because someone earlier had paid them off, acquiescently, sprinkled with salt and pepper.
For the next few days Gashu spent in excess of a hundred bucks – fuel charges for his transport –every time he visited the office. Two hundred bucks, that’s what had been demanded from him. Already he had spent a lot more than that just to fuel his car. He had wasted his time and sacrificed other priorities as well. It was a symbolic fight he had taken up, he knew - a fight not for money, but for a cause.
Gashu kept going to the office again and again. After nearly two weeks of tenacious effort he finally found a chink in the armour. For all the running around he had done, today he would bear the fruit. As he made headway into the, now easily recognisable, hall, he found all eyes but one dropping down. “Here he comes again,” Gashu heard the bribe demander whisper. He pulled a chair and sat in front of him. “Progress of my file?” he asked, politely. Nobody responded. Nobody talked. Nobody moved, save one. An older clerk sitting in the corner, it seemed, had taken enough. He proved to be the weakling - or should I say the good hidden amidst the evil – that Gashu had been searching for all this while. He had finally chiselled him out. As if choked by an overpowering guilt the older clerk rose, sped to the locker, and pulled the file. “This here is your file,” he said, with an air of submissiveness, “It`s complete. The documents are fully marked.” Before Gashu could hold the file, he pulled back, “Don`t expect us to say sorry. That is the last thing we do here.”
Gashu grabbed the prized documents, proceeded to the door and just before leaving took a parting look at his adversary, the bribe demanding clerk. His eyes revealed the storm in his belly, “You are a bounced cheque. If it were for people like you, my children would starve to death.” His children would never die starving, Gashu knew. Apprised of the means their father adopted to feed them however, they surely would.
As Gashu left the office that day, he stamped a line on the skies: It is one thing to drop down to your knees and accede to an evil; it is altogether different to stand up and make it kneel. Gashu visited the same office again, a hundred times over, with a hundred different requirements. Never ever again were his files kept waiting, never ever was he asked a bribe. He set a precedent that many others followed later. His two weeks of trouble, had earned him a lifetime of comfort, and more so an eternity of reward.
In contemporary times, corruption is pervasive, bribery ever so impending. Resignation to this fact and accession to the demands of the dishonest, only makes us one of them, only makes us a partner in crime. Life is not served on a platter. To stand for your values in the wake of torment, requires courage and asks for sacrifices. A fact that is palatable in the least, but a glaring fact nonetheless!
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