Escaped from DECEPTION POINT

Being cheated doesn’t give you a great feeling.It makes you feel like you’re weak and foolish.

But we get cleverer with being cheated and our foolhardiness improves.

So my first day in Kuala Lumpur was amazing on the whole but there were two incidents which kept us awake that entire night. But ultimately we did retort back and got we wanted. Right from childhood,I have always wished I were born in some other country as I encounter way too many hassles and corruption on a day to day basis in India even though I do love my country like anything.Please don’t call me unpatriotic,I had an offer to move abroad this year which I ultimately declined.

However, these two situations made me realize that I have become more immune to cheating and deception as this is something we encounter on a regular basis here with shopkeepers and taxi/rickshaw(tuk-tuk) drivers. Hence, even though life in India is tough in general it helps you toughen more and adjust better.

Here they are and I m numbering them to pretend like I m a very organised person(the truth is :I am probably the most disorganized human on this entire planet and I think you would have figured that out considering that my blog posts have no structure).

1.Outside the Kuala Lumpur National Mosque(Masjid Negara)

 

 

Image Source:Malaysia Site.Outside the National Mosque

We

 

 

As soon as our cab dropped us off to the national mosque, even though there were lots of people out there. There was this man who called out to  us. He came rushing towards us like his train was about to leave or something and asked us to take a picture of him and his son together. My father and that man introduced themselves to each other he said he was from Dubai ,when we told we were from India he told us that he wanted to come to India to meet Shahrukh Khan. Those not from India let me ask you something: How many of you from the United States have met Brad Pitt and Dwayne Johnson in person ?How many of you from the United Kingdom have met Daniel Radcliffe and One direction ?Please let me know in the comments section, I bet none of you have. If you have then I really envy you. So Shahrukh Khan lives in Mumbai,India’s largest city . I know a lot of people who have been living in Mumbai for more than 50 years and they still haven’t met him.

 

 

Shahrukh Khan-India’s most popular bollywood superstar who has fans all over the universe.

 

So, anyway he told us about Dubai and we told him about India. Things started getting awkward when he asked us what our currency was and he took out his purse to show us Dubai currency. Then he asked us to show what an Indian rupee note looked like and we took out a 100 and a 500 to show him. He and his son then told us that they had seen the recently introduced 2000 rupee notes on television. They begged us to show it to them despite our million replies that we didn’t have one which was the truth. He then offered us his money so that we could show him the 2000 rupee note.

 

100 rupee notes in India

 

 

 

 

The new 500 rupee note

The newly introduced 2000 rupee note

He told us that he assumed  we were lying to protect ourselves and he kept trying to convince us how honest he was and that he would never steal. We just broke free from him and he kept screaming apologies until we reached a place that was beyond the range at which his voice could travel. I can’t judge if he was trying to take our money or not but his tactics were extremely creepy and something fishy would have surely happened if we had fallen for them.

2.The shopkeeper at the KLCC twin towers mall

Kuala Lumpur looked beautiful at night and we obviously not wanted but needed to capture good pictures. Sadly our phones weren’t really co-operating at that moment. Our phones aren’t exactly renowned for capturing good picture. Both me and my dad own not-so-new Motorolla G phones and were getting extremely frustrated at the blinking of lights which would appear on our photos at night.

Motorolla G4-the phone which both me and my dad own.Not exactly very photograph friendly

 

My dad then suggested that we buy a point shoot camera there since they aren’t as expensive and difficult to carry as DSLR cameras are.

Point shoot cameras are easy to carry and capture well too

Unlike DSLR’s which can be a hindrance to carry

We were at the KLCC mall and  found a camera showroom there. I went for a Nikon point shoot camera which I thought captured pretty well but something was fishy-the price he charged was slightly too much for what the camera was worth. I remembered checking out this product on Amazon while hunting for cameras which I didn’t buy ultimately.

This is the exact same camera I bought

But then the price in show rooms are always more expensive than online and the ones in mall show rooms are even more expensive than independent shops. We ended up buying it and that guy told us that he would only give the pouch and the cover because the box in which the camera was placed would trigger the security alarms at the mall. I know you’re laughing thinking I am a fool but we didn’t know anything about Malaysia and to be frank we came to Kuala Lumpur without doing any research about the place.

After buying the camera, I was extremely disturbed for two reasons-:

1.My conscience was telling me that something is wrong

2.I knew that this camera would be a waste of money as I found myself completely inept in capturing pictures with it. In fact, the ones in my phone turned out much better than the camera but my dad was able to click excellent pictures with it. It could be because it has been more than 5 years since I held a digital camera in my hand.

We then decided to forget about the camera for a while and enjoy the musical fountain show.

The musical fountain show outside the twin towers captured by me on my phone

But once it was over we couldn’t stop thinking about it. We then went back to the hotel and did some research on it’s price in Malaysia in stores and we realized that we had been cheated. We couldn’t sleep the entire night and we had to do something about it to reduce the feelings of guilt, anger and dismay it had left behind. The next day we went to the shop and confronted the shopkeeper about it. He admitted that he had charged us more than the actual market price. We then asked him to either return the money or give us a product of our choice which cost the excess amount that we were charged.We ended up settling for the latter option.I ended up getting a pair of phone camera lenses which I have always wanted. But, I don’t know how to use it yet hence it proved to be useless through the trip.I will eventually learn through YouTube videos.

So we were even. The first time was near deception and the second time was deception which ended up having a resolution.

I have been cheated  a few times in India by the roadside shopkeepers and the auto rickshaw(tuk-tuk) drivers and I would end up calling someone or the other to rant about it.I know it sounds childish but I am not the kind of person who can keep her feelings to herself.Guess what the reply would be? I don’t mean to hurt anyone or be offensive and rude but they would talk about my innocence in a very critical way and tell me that I needed to be cleverer next time. They wouldn’t stop at that, they would tell me how cleverly they would have acted in that situation. Believe me or not, this has happened every time:A few days later the person who told me things like this would ended up getting cheated in a similar way and they would in turn rant to me.

 

I am not afraid to admit that I have been cheated several times by Autorickshaw(tuk-tuk) drivers in India.For the past year it hasn’t happened luckily.

People who never get cheated in their whole lives are the ones who have a very suspecting and distrustful mind. Having this sort of mind set is unhealthy for relationships. Trust is a key element in every positive relationships. We should have some degree of trust towards people but not fully to the extent where we let them take away all our important assets.

We must know whom to trust, when and in what situations. But how do we learn this stuff? You learnt to walk properly by falling on the floor a zillion times, you will learn how and when to trust people only when you get betrayed and deceived a million times.

Yes,admitting to your own mistakes will make me love you more than anything else

So if you have been cheated don’t think you’re stupid and don’t judge anyone or call them ‘not clever and innocent’ if they rant to you. You can tell them what the ideal action for that situation is but don’t use labels or talk about your cleverness. Because even the cleverest people in the universe can get cheated.

Lastly, I ll be in another city in a few hours. No, I am not travelling there for vacation but I am moving there for higher studies and better opportunities.It was an impulsive decision which I took in the last minute.I am moving to a different place after 10 years.I hope this place treats me well despite the fact that it’s already WAY TOO OVERPOPULATED and I am not helping by adding to the population.I shall share the details of where I am soon once I am all settled.

I may take some time in case you guys want me to read your blog posts so please don’t kill me as I am a bit busy with the moving and stuff.