During the recent flooding of Mumbai, some of my friends from my alumni group got stuck in Mumbai and were busy asking for help, guidance and advice on our group platform in WhatsApp.
I offered to help with shelter and food at a friend’s place for anyone stuck near the place of the friend’s flat and one young alumnus, let us call him PM rang me up from Mumbai and asked for directions.
I gave him my friend’s phone number and address and asked him to get in touch directly without the slightest hesitation. PM established contact with my friend, let us call him SA, and they both had a merry discussion at the end of which PM concluded that SA’s place was too far away from where he was stuck and decided to rough it out and move elsewhere.
In the meanwhile I was tracking PM’s activities and he conveyed his decision to me and thanked me for putting him in touch with such a gentleman!
I rang up SA to compliment him for impressing the young man and let it slip out that PM called him a gentleman and I ribbed him about it. SA in turn ribbed me saying that PM had called me gentleman too and both of us had a good laugh as, both of us are old reprobates who have known each other for the past 53 years. Neither of us could remember the last time that someone called either of us a gentleman.
PM eventually found shelter closer to where he got stuck and returned safe and sound the following afternoon to Pune.