I am temptation. I can strike anyone, at anytime, in any situation and in any point of one's life. Bigger the person, harder I strike. 

I wait around, lurking in the shadow of thoughts. I search for a weak mind or a greedy heart to prey upon. For the more I strike the more I multiply. The wider I spread my net, the more I play upon the minds of people. 

I race every moment to be ahead of positive emotions like honesty, compassion, conscientiousness, ethics, righteousness and other good qualities.

Today, I looked at starting small. To ensure that I reach out far and wide, to small and big, to rich and poor.

My eyes searched in the small shops in Patna. I saw that Joginder was counting up the cash. I gave him the idea. Just a passing thought. He did some quick mental calculations. He asked the grocer to weigh everything less by precisely 5 percent but bill everything for the entire 100 percent amount. 

He counted the balance, extracted his share and paid a small sum of money back to the grocer in return for the false bill. He was a principled man. He did not want to take a free favour from the grocer. And while the small sum of money was like peanuts to the grocer, why would he refuse the cash that came his way.

Back home, Joginder unloaded everything in the kitchen and Suman, the lady of the house paid him ten rupees for his service. 

While Joginder was taking his tip from Suman, I struck in Joginder's home, playing the characters like puppets. Rajesh, the electrician, was calculating the cost of the wiring for Diwali lights in his house. Joginder's wife Laxmi was haggling with Rajesh for a better deal. "Fine, I will reduce fifty rupees for you. In exchange for a portion of your delicious fish curry when you make it next. With extra chillies, mind it."

He laughed and returned fifty rupees and walked out of the house. He ended up making a neat sum of a hundred rupees by over estimating on the wiring cost. 

Oh, I quite forgot to mention that Laxmi had already done something quite interesting under my influence. 

She took out the few potatoes and onions that she had 'borrowed' from the house where she worked as a maid. She had even managed to pinch a packet of cumin which was lying forgotten for days on the shelf. Her madam would not miss it. After all Laxmi had been a good maid and honest most of the time. She had handed back the gold earring which she had found on the bed the other day and never got a tip for her honesty. After the potato curry was simmering on the gas, she proceeded to wash her clothes. She changed into a maxi and put her saree and underskirt along with the rest of the laundry for washing. The detergent powder that she had stuffed in the waist of her saree and the wet detergent bar that she had rubbed on her underskirt while washing clothes for her madam would be enough for her wash load of the day. 

Meanwhile, I went across to check what Suman was doing. She was meeting her friends at The Fried Chicken Place. They ordered burgers and a tub of chicken which came with a lot of sauce pouches. They opened a few pouches and Suman stuffed the rest into her handbag. 

“Excuse me, could you get me some extra sauce pouches?” Suman's friend Ratna asked the server.

The waiter placed an approximate quantity of pouches and walked off uncaringly. The meal over, the ladies walked out and Suman stuffed the leftover pouches in her bag, ignoring the sign that requested to return the unused pouches.

Back home she put them in her kitchen cupboard, feeling very pleased with herself. Those would come handy for her children's lunch box, she thought as she gazed outside and saw the neighbour aunty plucking flowers for her puja from the building garden. “Cheapskate. She saves some ten rupees on those flowers per day. What is the point?”

The day before, I had influenced Suman's husband Sanjay a bit.

He came home after his long travel and opening his bag, held out a separate hotel laundry bag for Suman. She eagerly opened the bag to find a treasure trove of items taken from the hotel room. 

A pair of carpet slippers, a comb and a disposable razor. A couple of pens and notepads. Multiple tiny bottles of moisturiser, shampoo, shower gel and unused soaps. The bottles would come handy during her travels. There would be no need to carry huge bottles of lotions and shower gels. And she would even place one pack of shower gel in her handbag to be used in a toilet without soap.

The comb could be used by her husband or children. They were just the right size for the back pocket. 

The carpet slippers would be of no particular use but any visitor who came home could be given that for temporary use. 

Then there were also items like a shoe shine, a shower cap which would be unused but would still remain in her kit bag just in case.

And the best were the innumerable coffee pouches, four varieties of tea bags, artificial sugar and sugar pouches. All items could be good for a rainy day.

Suman loved hotel consumables. Once in Goa, I had goaded her to whack off the lovely terracotta dispensers of shower gel, shampoos and moisturisers. The hotel discretely billed them at Rs 300 per bottle while settling the final bill. It turned out to be the most expensive terracotta item she had ever bought in her life and one of them broke on the way back home, on top of that.

She cringed as she recalled that unfortunate incident. She should have emptied the shower gel before packing it.

I have even travelled across the seas to the States.

Meet Ranjani, Suman's boss who loves to talk about her time in the States. “Everything is so convenient there. And the medical insurance is so well organised. One should always have their delivery in the States. We were fully covered by insurance, you know. When we were getting discharged from the hospital, we took away all the small sheets that they had given for the baby. And the rolls of tissues and napkins Along with the extra diapers that the hospital had provided. In fact, as we were going out, the nurse handed over the basin she had used to wash my baby every day. After all it was our insurance that had paid for it. So we were entitled to take it back with us. The quality of the linen was so good that I used it for many years. Full paisa vasool, I tell ya.”

Ranjani's husband Sameer worked in the IT industry. Every time his children wanted a blank CD for their music collection, I would strike him with a naughty idea. He would get one issued for himself from the office. After all, it was a small amount and at the rate they get used up in client presentations in any case, one would not miss if he helped himself to a couple of CDs once in a few months. Nobody even questioned him when he borrowed a pen drive and never returned it. That the pen drive stored his music collection for his car instead of the data he was supposed to store in it was a tiny detail that was never mentioned to anyone in the company. Only I, temptation, am aware of it.

Sameer's superior Naveen was a slimy character; a picture of suaveness, perfection and polish. He was a good talker and therefore a good showpiece in front of the customers. And therefore, he was a very good candidate to have multiple temptations, hence my frequent quarry.

Naveen would not hesitate to order the office boy to clean up his car during office hours. This way he managed to save a tidy sum of five hundred rupees that he would have otherwise paid the car cleaner.  In exchange, he would give him a biscuit pack or two which he got the pantry to issue to him if he ever stayed even one minute more than the normal working hours. And sometimes, he would give him a few bucks which he would charge on his company as tips when he was settling his travel bills. Naveen believed in saving every bit of money that would have been spent otherwise. He wouldn't hesitate to take a few saplings from the office for his wife to plant in their terrace garden, after sweet talking the gardener and giving him some of the free biscuits too!

I must tell you of an incident that happened once when Sameer and Naveen had visited Mumbai on work. Sameer stayed in a hotel while Naveen stayed with his parents. Naveen came to the hotel to join him for breakfast. And why not? The company was paying for it.  Naveen's mom happened to call on his mobile. She was waiting at the reception. Naveen had asked her to sit there until he finished his breakfast meeting with me.

“Mom,” Sameer heard Naveen talk as I struck him with a wicked idea, “on second thoughts, why don't you come to the breakfast room and join us? Why do you want to wait there and be bored. I will drop you when we go to the client.”

“No, no, it will be a slight detour but no issues. We will manage.”

His mother walked in and joined them for breakfast. Naveen looked at Sameer appreciatively as he signed the bill and put it on his room. Afterwards, when Sameer got his travel bills signed, Naveen did not bat an eyelid as he signed the extra person's breakfast cost.

After all this was a very small amount compared to the boxes of chocolates and dry fruits he gave to his family during Diwali on the pretext of giving them to customers. 

Nobody questioned him because he was bringing in the business which was worth more than the cost of a few dry fruit boxes. His logic was simple. Every little rupee added to his CTC, cost to company. I seriously loved working on this guy. He gave me a lot of creative width.

Naveen's wife Bakul was a high flyer. Her travelling job kept her occupied and even earned her some bucks on the sly. She would often over bill her travelling claims by a few hundred rupees. Small amounts that did not catch the eye were filed under expenses without bill. Sometimes she managed to pick up bills left over by other customers on the cash counter for claiming. Sometimes she would claim a higher tip and sometimes pick up cakes and chips for her home and bill it under her food bills. The amount she saved would be minuscule but it gave her a deep sense of satisfaction when she counted up a sum of two to five hundred rupees in cash or kind on every travel. It paid for her salon visits, cosmetics or grocery items, she would calculate. 

Naveen's boss Vivek was even more interesting to work with than Naveen. He was the kind of guy with whom I worked on the bigger bets. He once managed to get a duplicate dining set for his home when he purchased the same for his office dining area. A little over invoicing and a small sum of money paid to the dealer and a promise of future business had helped them work around the auditing hurdle. This was a total win-win situation for both parties so why would anyone complain?

I ensured this culture came from the top. The super boss Mr Singh loved to travel. His temptations were always on a larger scale. Lavish and grand. I felt like a king every time I worked on his mind. I ensured he took a trip to the States every year ostensibly for some training. One year he went to Europe. The fact that one of his sons was working in the States and the other had secured an admission in Europe was, you guessed it right, not a coincidence.

His wife Naina once went to Bangalore. She realised that she was short of cash. I immediately gave her the right, err wrong idea. She didn't even notice my handiwork on her. She called up the Bangalore office and borrowed ten thousand rupees from them. Radha, the honest accountant, called up Mr Singh and asked him for the cash to account for it before month end. Before Mr Singh could answer I dropped a hint. He asked Radha to call him back as he was busy. The next day he cut her off as she started talking, saying that he had to go. The day after, he listened to her patiently, “Yes, Radha, tell me, what were you calling me for?”

“Mr Singh, I need to account for the ten thousand rupees cash that Mrs Singh borrowed from petty cash last week. How do I collect it from you?”

“Why don't you ask Naina? She was the one who borrowed it. Please do not call me for these petty issues.”

Radha called up Naina. 

“Mr Singh directed me to you for the ten thousand rupees that you had borrowed from the office.”

“What rubbish, Radha! Please deal these issues with Mr Singh. Don't get me into these official matters dear.”

The line went dead. Radha thought it best to ask the accounts executive to manage the books with his accounting talents.

“Don't worry, I will handle it,” he assured her, as he dialled the number of Mr Verma, the head of finance. 

Mr Verma did not take his call as he was busy negotiating the kick back from the dealer for the new laptops they were buying for the staff. It would run to a few lakhs, he calculated as he salivated over the prospect of getting that money. That would finance his next holiday. Don't give me that look. I just thought it would be interesting to tempt the finance head. I want to see how he will pull that off.

My net is spread far and wide. Everyone likes taking something for free. They do it either because they have a compelling reason to do it or out of a sense of entitlement. Some items docked off are seemingly harmless items. People rationalise their reason for taking it. Yet the truth is that someone else is paying through their nose for it.

Thus I reflect as I stretch myself far and about to expand my area of influence.