Off The Cuff: Opportunity, as some say, knocks only once…

When the offer for employment arrived, Shankar's wife said take it, you may never get the opportunity again. Shankar agreed, observing, my B.Com isn't paying much here anyway.

One can never be educated enough in a land of a billion people. Go, urged his wife, we will manage, Abhishek and I. I'll pawn the jewels, the money will sustain us until you stablise, we will eat rice and pickle for a month or two, we're used to it anyway.

That's how Shankar, the cotton bale carrier, arrived in that land across the Arabian Sea. Eight hundred crisp currency notes a month were not to be scoffed at. And he was lucky. A rival firm was paying its carriers six hundred. He knew that, because he roomed with some of them.

Seven, to be precise. Common men, in a common room, with a common toilet and the common need to save every sweat-earned note till it hurt. Shankar learned to ignore the pinch in his belly. He mastered the art of postponing lunches and deferring dinners.

Simple goal

His goal was simple: send six hundred, or more, home to wife and five-year-old. For sustenance, he lived on the non-stop music that emanated from Gurcharan's transistor. He fell asleep each night listening to DJ Doll, A.R. Rehman and Daler Mehndi on the local FM station.

Zara, zara mehakta hai played in his mind like a merry-go-round without a stop switch. Shankar tried singing it aloud to get the mind music to cease. It didn't work.

It was Gurcharan who finally suggested a remedy. Come with me on Thursday night, I know this place…. So they went, their pockets sagging under the weight of payday.

For four hours Shankar sat transfixed.

This was like nothing he had experienced. The music, the lights, the dancers, each of them worth a lyrical ode.

The guilty knot in his stomach untwisted.

Twisted guilt

Music is a great unwinder of twisted guilt. Gurcharan drew Shankar's attention to a table nearby. A matronly lady had her hand held up, counting off fingers. Each finger indicates a fifty, said Gurcharan, that man there has just paid the dancer 250 in appreciation.

If they play Anu Malik's Aaja Gufaon Mein, I'm going to give the dancer fifty myself, he added. And so he did, a little later, tapping his feet hysterically while the beautiful dancer bowed her thanks gracefully.

Then the lights dimmed to a ghostly blue and this apparition in white appeared out of the smoke machine mist, defining elegance, elasticity and everything Shankar had waited for. Zara, zara mehakta hai. Your song, said Gurcharan, as Shankar held up a hand, palm outward to signal his willingness to pay.

Fifty he could afford. But the matronly lady saw five fingers and quickly counted them off.

Two hundred and fifty! Gurcharan laughed at Shankar's naivety. They left quickly after that. But Shankar returned the following week, and the week thereafter. He searched his pockets till the fabric rubbed his fingers raw.

When he ran out of money, he did the obvious: borrow. His demand draft home was overdue by two months.

But he couldn't get off this carousel, try as he might. It was Shankar's bad luck that he had wandered down a street named B.Com.

Had he chosen the avenue named Literature he would have been aware of the other half of the saying 'Opportunity knocks only once…. But temptation leans on the doorbell'.