Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The news that my good friend Joe, aka Conman Joe, had passed on from the land of the finite to that of the infinite struck me like a bolt from the blue. It was his only living relative, Peter, who had phoned in with the sad news. For a while I wondered whether Peter, who always had an off-on relationship with his cousin, had just wanted to get even by pulling a fast one about his demise.
Like an ox, Joe could knock back a whole bottle of unadulterated military rum and stand ramrod straight like a general in full regalia taking the salute at a passing out parade. The news that he had passed on, and that too in the prime of his life, appeared too incredible to be true. To check it out I gingerly walked up to his house. From the sea of faces 8212; none of which looked sad in the least 8212; I could fathom that the worst had indeed happened. I first met Joe before he turned Conman Joe at a seedy bar in downtown Andheri, a suburb in Mumbai, where I had gone not just to sip the bubbly but to do some research on dance bar girls for a feature that I was working on. Joe had then just started out on a career in crime.
That Joe had a softer and benevolent side to him I came to know only at his funeral, where a number of young children from a nearby orphanage had turned up to pay homage. It turned out that Joe had channelled the bulk of his earnings towards supporting charitable causes. As the children chanted a prayer while the bier was being lifted, I realised that for them he was their beloved uncle who cared for their welfare and not a fugitive from the law. Would Joe8217;s good deeds qualify him for a place in heaven, or would he rot in hell, I often wonder?
