OUR MISER FRIEND
Our Miser Friend
We called him the miser.
There were five of us—five government employees from the same department, all posted in Bhubaneswar. For nearly thirty years, we had shared the same tea stall, the same old wooden bench, the same cups of tea, and the same endless arguments about everything under the sun.
And, almost every day, we laughed at the same person.
Him.
He was the one who brought his own tiffin while the rest of us ordered snacks.
He was the one who never ordered a second cup of tea.
He was the one who checked the bill twice before paying.
And if one of us ever asked to borrow money, he would quietly take out his little notebook, write down the amount, and say,
"Interest at four percent. Same as last time."
We would burst out laughing.
"Miser!" we would tease him. "You're a Section Officer, your wife is also a government employee, and you still charge interest to your own friends?"
He would simply smile.
Then he would say,
"Friendship and money should be kept separate. That's why our friendship has lasted thirty years."
We laughed.
He laughed.
The tea arrived.
And life went on.
But there was something about him that we never fully understood.
He was not a man struggling financially.
He was a native of Bhubaneswar, born into a family that had lived there for generations. His ancestors had left behind several shops and properties in the city. The family income from those properties had given him a level of financial security that most of us could only dream about.
His wife was also a government servant.
Between his salary, his wife's salary, their savings, and the income from the family properties, they lived a comfortable life.
They were not rich in the flashy sense. They didn't show off. They lived simply.
But they had no real financial constraint.
That was precisely why we found his behaviour so amusing.
He had enough.
And still, he behaved as though every rupee mattered.
What we didn't know was that he had a habit of quietly setting aside some of his personal savings.
And whenever one of us needed help, that was the money he used.
He never touched the family property income.
He never used his wife's money.
And, as far as we knew, she had no idea how much of his personal savings he had been quietly lending to us over the years.
He kept that part of his life completely separate.
We simply thought he was a miser who loved money.
We had no idea that some of the money he was so careful about was eventually finding its way into our hands.
Over the years, every one of us borrowed money from him.
Sometimes fifty thousand.
Sometimes a lakh.
Once, when my daughter was getting married, I was short by two lakh rupees.
I went to him.
He didn't ask why.
He didn't ask when I would return it.
He opened his notebook, wrote down the amount, and pushed the money toward me.
"Four percent," he said.
I remember looking at him and thinking, What a miser.
But there was something strange about him.
He never chased us for repayment.
If I said, "This month is difficult. I'll pay next month," he would simply nod.
If someone said, "I need another year," he would say,
"Take two. The interest will keep running."
And then he would smile.
We thought it was greed.
We thought he simply loved money.
We thought he was unnecessarily calculating.
We thought we knew him.
We knew nothing.
• • •
He died in March.
It happened quickly.
Three days in the ICU.
Three days of hope, fear, phone calls, prayers—and then, suddenly, he was gone.
We were there at the hospital.
We were there at the cremation.
The four of us stood together afterward, but none of us spoke much.
Yet all four of us were thinking the same thing.
He had never taken signatures.
Never written formal agreements.
Never kept any legal record of the money he had lent us.
Only that little notebook.
And we knew exactly what that meant.
If we said nothing, no one would ever know.
No one except us.
And that thought made us ashamed.
Three days later, we met at our old tea stall.
The same bench.
The same tea.
But one chair was empty.
The eldest among us finally said,
"We should go to Bhabhi."
We looked at him.
"We owe him money. We should repay it."
Someone hesitated.
"But what do we say? There's no paperwork. She may not even know he lent us anything."
The eldest shook his head.
"Then we tell her the truth. We don't need proof to know what we owe our friend."
Everyone agreed.
We collected whatever money we could.
Some paid the full amount.
Some could only manage part of it.
We put it all together in an envelope.
It wasn't easy.
But it was the least we could do.
And on Sunday afternoon, we went to his house.
• • •
His wife welcomed us quietly.
She made tea.
His photograph was hanging on the wall.
For a few seconds, none of us could look at it.
Finally, the eldest spoke.
"Bhabhi, we've come to settle something."
She looked at him.
"Your husband helped us many times. We borrowed money from him over the years."
He placed the envelope on the table.
"We want to repay him."
She stared at the envelope.
Then she looked at us.
And asked,
"Do you have any paper?"
We were silent.
"Any written agreement? Any signed document? Anything showing that you owe him this money?"
We looked at one another.
There was nothing.
She slowly pushed the envelope back toward us.
Then she said,
"I knew you might come."
We looked at her, confused.
She continued,
"Before he died, my husband told me something."
She paused.
"He said, 'Some of my friends may come after I'm gone. They may bring money and say they owe me. But there will be no paper. No proof. If they come, don't accept it.'"
We stared at her.
She continued,
"He told me they would probably say they wanted to help me because I was a widow."
Her voice became softer.
"He told me, 'Don't accept their sympathy. Ask them for proof. If there is no proof, don't take their money.'"
Then she looked at us.
"I promised him I wouldn't."
She touched the envelope gently and pushed it back.
"I'm sorry. I know you mean well. But I gave him my word."
None of us knew what to say.
We stood up.
We thanked her for the tea.
And we left.
• • •
No one spoke in the car.
Not a single word.
We drove toward our old tea stall.
The same road we had travelled hundreds of times.
The same traffic.
The same buildings.
The same city.
But everything felt different.
Suddenly, the eldest pulled the car over.
He put both hands on the steering wheel and lowered his head.
His shoulders began to shake.
He was crying.
Then he whispered,
"He planned this."
We looked at him.
"What?"
He wiped his eyes.
"He planned this."
And suddenly, we understood.
He knew us.
He knew we would come.
He knew we would feel guilty.
He knew we would try to repay him.
And he knew something else.
He knew that his wife had never known how much of his personal savings he had quietly lent to us.
She had never been part of those private arrangements.
She had never seen the notebook.
She had never known that the man she thought was so careful with money had spent years quietly setting aside his own savings to help his friends.
And now, if we suddenly told her everything, she might accept the money.
But he had already thought of that possibility.
He had made her believe that if his friends ever came with money after his death, it would simply be sympathy.
And he had made her promise to refuse it without proof.
He had found one final way to protect her dignity.
And one final way to make sure we would never feel that our friendship had become a transaction.
The eldest looked at us and said,
"He knew us better than we knew ourselves."
Another of us whispered,
"All these years, we called him a miser."
No one laughed.
Because something inside us had begun to break.
• • •
That evening, sitting in the car, we finally understood the man we had spent thirty years making fun of.
He had never needed our money.
He had never needed the interest.
He had family shops.
He had savings.
His wife had her own government salary.
They had a secure and comfortable life.
Yet whenever one of us was in trouble, he would quietly open his own savings and help.
Not his wife's money.
Not the family property income.
His money.
His savings.
Money he had earned and saved over the years.
Money his wife didn't even know he was using this way.
And he never made us feel that he was doing us a favour.
He simply called it a loan.
He wrote it in his notebook.
He charged a little interest.
And then he forgot about it.
We had mistaken his silence for greed.
We had mistaken his discipline for stinginess.
We had mistaken his carefulness for selfishness.
The truth was almost the opposite.
He was careful with his own money so that he could quietly help the people he loved.
He had spent thirty years giving to us without ever allowing us to see it as generosity.
Because if we had known, perhaps our friendship would have changed.
Perhaps we would have felt indebted.
Perhaps we would have felt small.
He didn't want that.
He wanted us to remain his friends.
Not his debtors.
And even after he was gone, he was still protecting us from the burden of gratitude.
• • •
We never told his wife the whole truth.
She still believes we went there because we felt sorry for her.
She still believes the money was an offer of sympathy.
And we let her believe it.
Because that was the final gift our friend had arranged for all of us.
The money stayed with us.
None of us spent it.
We kept it.
Not because it belonged to us.
But because every time we looked at it, we remembered him.
We remembered the notebook.
The four-percent interest.
The second cup of tea he never ordered.
The jokes we made.
The times he helped us.
And the man we never really understood.
• • •
Every month, on the anniversary of his death, the four of us meet at the old tea stall.
Same bench.
Same tea.
Same four friends.
Only one thing is missing.
His voice.
Sometimes we still talk about him.
Sometimes we laugh.
But we don't laugh at him anymore.
We laugh at ourselves.
Because for thirty years, we had called the most generous man we knew a miser.
He was careful with every rupee he spent on himself.
But when someone he loved needed help, he never counted the cost.
He gave quietly.
He gave without applause.
He gave without telling anyone.
And perhaps the greatest thing he ever gave us wasn't the money.
It was the dignity of never making us feel that we had received it.
We thought he was holding on tightly to his money.
We were wrong.
He was holding on tightly to himself—and giving away everything else.
Our miser friend.
The man we misunderstood for thirty years.
The richest man any of us ever knew.
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