the stock broker

The Stockbroker
The deputy jailor in charge of the prison stores was my friend, and I would usually stop by the store to say a quick hello or have a coffee, when I passed that way. The prison store is a huge hall with shelves full a gunny bags and mountains of vegetables stocked in various corners. It has a characteristic vegetable market smell, and as it brought back nostalgic memories of the past, which I spent in the kitchens of my grandfather’s hotel in Bangalore, I would never miss an opportunity to visit it when I passed that way.
It was on a Monday morning that I got a slip. The deputy jailor in charge of the stores, had summoned me. Wondering why I was needed so early in the morning, I casually walked to the main gates of the prison, just beside which the store was situated. The deputy jailor was waiting at the door and took me in. Over hot coffee, he showed me the X-Rays. His seven year old son had fallen down and broken his forearm. I saw the x-rays, it was a greenstick fracture of the radius and ulna. The post reduction x-rays showed that the position was satisfactory. The prescription slips showed that he had consulted a proper orthopedic surgeon who had given the correct treatment. All he needed was re assurance, which I gave while we sipped tea.
As we talked, I looked around the store. Around twenty people were chopping vegetables, cucumbers and cauliflowers, carrots, onions, potatoes and eggplants; their hands moved with varying efficiency as the whole vegetables on the wooden blocks before them quickly changed into a mound of smaller chopped pieces. Then I saw it again. The chap in grey hair and spectacles was waving at me. It was a shy half nod, half wave, half tata, and the facial expression alternated between embarrassments, apprehension and hope. The press and media have made me a well known person and lot of people whom I don’t know, seemed to know me. As I was about to turn to my coffee, I recognized him. K.R.Prakash – a famous stockbroker from Bombay. I had to squeeze my eyes a few times before I could realize that it was him, and I was not mistaken. With a week old salt and pepper beard, a dirty t-shirt, a checked lungi, squat on the floor, knife in hand, he looked like the least likely candidate to be K.R.Prakash.
When I had last met him in Bombay, he had come to consult me regarding a knee replacement for his old mother. He had come to Oberoi where I was staying and driven me in his E Class Mercedes to his flat at Malabar Hill. It was a ninth-floor three thousand square foot apartment, which even in those days cost fifteen thousand rupees a square foot. Isfahani rugs, IKEA furniture, Nakamichi stereo, Bose speakers, MF Hussain paintings, and a seventy-two inch Grundig television had left me so impressed that I could not stop talking about it to my wife and friends for days to on end. He had even paid me a five thousand rupee consulting fees, which was by for the highest that I had received until then. In six years he was chopping vegetables in a prison store!
I told the Deputy Jailor that he was my old acquaintance and was permitted to take him to my block. He sipped the hot tea gratefully and had almost tears in his eyes as I offered him a cigarette, a priceless commodity in prison. Of course, there were nothing new in his story. From the bull king of Mumbai stock markets to a bankrupt pauper had taken just two years and half a dozen incorrect decisions. Backing his fortune on wrong speculations, had resulted in his horses coming last in the race. When he found that he was really deep down in the mess, he simply absconded. Went away to his ancestral village in Chengelpet near Chennai. He remained in hiding for a few weeks, but the police complaints lodged against him in Mumbai brought the cops sniffing!
Arrested from his village, he was now in the process of awaiting a transit warrant to Bombay. He ground the cigarette into the coconut shell acting as an ashtray, and looked at his left wrist. Then he suddenly realized prisons don’t allow wrist watches! He gave a week smile and walked out. The last time I had seen him the wrist had contained a Rolex watch which he had proudly told me, was worth three lac rupees!