Never Judge a Book by its Cover

Never Judge a Book by its Cover He was limping around on his crutches and in rag tag clothes, that were dirty and torn from a few places. As expected, he was treated like a Begger...!! Perhaps he WAS a beggar, I thought, he would try to enter a shop and the shop keeper or his servant would say “Maaf karoo baba “, with his head hung down he would, try his luck at the next shop

At a few shops someone did give him some money, he said nothing, but with a cynic smile on his face put it in his rag tag pocket and moved to the next shop During the interim period after passing my Intermediates and waiting of admission in university. I used to loiter around and would often visit my father’s shop in Doodh Gali, Juna market, main attraction “Chanps” [Spareribs] Just opposite Nigar cinema, there was this hotel, whose specialty was these “Chanps” and with Nan and raita with generous doze of Salad with it, they were my favorite’s I was watching him, absent mindedly, then he came to our shop and entered it, our sales man was about to shoo him off, my father gestured him to do nothing, the man hesitatingly stepped in and finding no negative reaction, couraged himself to the Product shelves, our sales man was again about to say “we do not retail and ours is a wholesale shop” but again my father gestured him to stay quiet The man looked back, first at the salesman then at my father and then turned back to the shelf, picked up a product and looked back at my father, without saying anything my father quoted the price, he considered it and then put it back and moved to the next product. He did so for a number of products, he would pick the product and enquiringly look at my father and he would simply quote the price without saying anything else. Then he came to my fathers table and dragged the chair and sat himself on it. My father still said nothing and I kept looking at him He then took out a worn torn piece of paper from his pocket and looked intently at it, and gave it to my father. My father looked at it, and on a piece of paper, started scribing something, once looking at his paper then writing on his paper, then gave both the paper back to him He put his list back in his pocket and looked at the paper my father has written, intently, and then in an arguing tone said to correct it. My father took it back, re-examined it and then gave it back and said, everything is correct. He pondered on it, took his piece of paper out from his pocket looked at it, and then as if satisfied, bought out his purse, took out some Rs 10,000 from it and gave it to my father, and again took out another paper, and said, this is the transport address, I will collect the bilty in around 2 hours Its only then I realized he has just purchased around Rs 10,000 worth products from us, mind you in current terms it would be around Rs 1 Lac. Then he slowly stood up from the chair, and with no worry on his face, went down the street, I went after him, he trudged, rather dragged him to the corner of the street, stopped, took out the sympathy money given to him by the shopkeeper and without counting, put them in the donation box of some Madrassa there without counting. Its then I realized and learned a lesson again, i.e. never to judge a book by its cover. Later that night, on our dinner table I asked my father how did he knew that he was a trader, my father looked at me, and said, while he was young and struggling as a trader, he used to visit various cities for his order, and at small town in interior Sindh he saw a similar shopkeeper sitting in a shop .so when he saw him, his immediate thoughts were, perhaps its him. But no, he was not that shopkeeper. He was a trader from Multan. Later I moved to Lahore, but whenever I visited back, and went to my father’s shop, I would often find Bilties with his name on it, that were to be posted. So, he had become our regular customer, I looked in the debit ledger and there was very little amount against his name, so he was a good customer. In our trade it was normal to be a payment at late as three months, but his was hardly two or three weeks late.