I live in Kolkata where there is a very famous sweet shop called Balaram Mullick and Radharaman Mullick. One day me and my mom were shopping at Acropolis Mall and decided to visit the shop which is only a few steps away. We had some guests coming over next day and had a small get together, so were getting the sweets from there.

We had already ordered some an we’re pondering what else to get when this woman walked in. The woman was in her 60s at least.

Now there was this guy, a member of the staff who was serving us. He asked if we wanted anything more, and I remembered that grandma loves the ‘Aam doi’ (mango curd) they sell. So I asked him to pack two of those. I wanted some more, but there were only two left, so we got that. Suddenly this woman who had been standing there for about a minute, jumped onto the staff guy who was serving us and said, ‘ Give me this’, pointing a sweet. The staff guy, looked at us and informed the woman that he was already serving us and couldn’t cut to her suddenly. But she was insistent and said that she has a car waiting. She said ‘ arey Eder pore Debe aage amake dao’ ( serve them later first give me what I’m asking’.

The staff guy looked at us, probably wondering what he should do. So I cut in, telling her nicely that we were there first and that we were in a hurry as well. It was the truth. I live in Joka which is about 2 hours away from that place with all the traffic and stuff. Even if you have a car, which we didn’t, the journey was long.

I didn’t elaborate at that time, but I told her clearly that she’d have to wait and I wasn’t gonna let her go first. It would’ve turned ugly, but at that time another staff guy became free and attended her. She gave away her orders as if they owed her something , adding frequently, ‘ Bhalo kore diyo’ ( take care of the food) and ‘ onek important’ ( it’s very important).

Anyway, we were getting our stuff, when I noticed that our Mango Curd wasn’t there. So I asked the server, he said he had forgotten about it in all that conundrum. I told him it’s okay and he went to get it for us.

At this time, a very loud guy entered the store. He was already talking very loudly to his mom , asking why she was getting so late and saying she should’ve paid them to serve her first. His mom of course was the old snobby lady. At this point, everybody in the shop had stopped to stare at him. He went to his mom and saw what she has ordered and said, ‘ take the special stuff’ very loudly, ‘ these are all worthless. You should get the special stuff’. So he asked the guy who was serving them what were the “ special stuff ”available. The server told him about some things including the mango curd. The guy said he wanted some of the stuff including the mango curd. But then seeing our server packing up the curd, their server went back on it and told the guy that they were out of mango curd.

To this, he said that he had just seen there was some. But the server told him (pointing at us) that we already had taken it.

I was listening to all this ( it was hard not to, he was so loud) but my mom had already gotten all her sweets, so we paid for it and started picking up the packets. Right then, the guy walked up to us and picked up our mango curd packet and starts walking away. I called out and said ‘it’s ours’. He said, it wasn’t. After some argument and questioning our server, it became clear that the packet was our and we had already paid for it. So the guy fisheed out a ₹500 note and said ‘ onek beshi ache.’ ( there’s lot more here). Basically he wanted to buy some ₹200 (I don’t remember the price) stuff from us at ₹500. He wanted to buy the curd and was willing to pay more for it. I told him it’s not for sale and that I wanted my packet back.

After some argument we finally got the packet and left. Outside the store we were waiting for our cab, when this guy walked out with a huge number of packets. He was talking in same loud manner with his mom, glancing backwards. Their car was apparently on the opposite side of the road. He started to get off the pavement, when he stumbled on a small stonechip, and fell. The packet went flying from his hand and onto the road. It’s a busy road so immediately it was trampled.

I just stood there and gaped, saying to myself, that the man deserved it.

That was definitely the most satisfying case of instant karma I had watched first hand.