My dad's memoirs- Episode 2

 (Chronicles of my dad down the memory lane in his own words)

I remember this incident during our stay at Ghaziabad. I was evaluating answer papers of the departmental competitive exam.

A burly Haryanvi man who took the exam tried to offer me a fat bribe to give him good marks in the exam. He was very influential and gained information from birdies of the whereabouts of all the five answer papers which were sent to be evaluated all over the country. He went to all those places, offered bribes to the evaluators and persuaded them to give him good marks. His fifth paper was sent to be evaluated at Ghaziabad, to me. He called me constantly for two days on the phone and started harassing me. I thought I would give him grace marks if he wrote something but his paper was blank. I had to fail him. He invited himself to my home. He saw two-year-old Aparna playfully running about here-and-there. He threatened me saying, “You seem to have a small happy family today. Just take care that it might not be the same tomorrow.” He was a hefty man and in no way I would have matched his strength. He threatened me saying that he would carry me and push me off the terrace. My wife got scared listening to his ultimatum. She called her brothers and everyone in the family panicked. I avoided venturing out alone on my scooter and stayed put safely inside home. He would hover under the apartment, pacing angrily and watching out for my posting of the evaluated papers.  I managed to parcel and send away the bundle of evaluated papers secretly and safely.

I even considered contacting the police. After a couple of days all our neighbours came to know about the problem. They had a nice chat with him saying that I am a man of scruples and would never fall for a bribe.  They told him to ‘fix’ some corruptible higher authority in the examination cell so that they would change his result and that there is no use trying to ‘grease my palms’ as I would not be so easily bent on principles. They told him that I am a hard working, innocent and an honest man and it would do him no good by threatening me except wasting his time. He came to know that I already parceled the papers. He finally saw to that his physical strength is nothing in front of my honesty and left us alone.