The Fun Agent

Standing on a footpath, Mat Grin looked forlorn at his Ford Angela as the snatcher sent by the money lender drove it away from the front of his office. The black car was the first one he had bought. Gone now, like the others.

With a deep pit in his heart, which he knew he would never be able to fill up, he dragged himself away from the building of Grin Incorporations. The imposing structure would soon bear some other name. From the fear of meeting curious looks of the employees he had retained until the day, the pity workers he had played and toggled with to meet his cunning purposes, he did not even glance for one last time at the empire he had raised. Neither those windows belonged him now, nor did he rule the people standing behind them. All was lost.

As he walked past a turn, he interested a taxi driver. And that was the confirmation of his defeat. Normally he wouldn’t notice the mundane things on the road as he would fly past those lost in some business papers sitting in a cosy sit of his car, but today, he was one of those. He still had some money in his pocket to pay the taxi up to his home, but no, his pride did not allow that. His feet would not turn towards the hire-car, they would rather walk all the way.

He suddenly realised that he was forgetting something he used to tell the staff members standing rigidly in front of his desk. Change with the time, or you’ll break - a quote he had followed throughout the last decade while the industries under his wing were multiplying and his name was getting stronger by the day. He halted abruptly as the quote rang in his head now. The times were changing for him, and he needed to change with them. The taxi man was still interested, waiting for a wave.

‘I’ve broken already,’ Mat whispered adamantly and pushed himself away from the taxi.

Have I really? he asked himself after a while as the busy evening blurred about him over the footpath. He wanted to believe there was some way he could regain at least some of what he had lost, but his brain hadn’t forgotten the logic yet. He was smashed flat, as he would describe his competitors some time back. Even the house that he walked towards wouldn’t be his the next morning. His wife had foreseen it all and already left him a week ago.

Just then a familiar whiff of roasted beef engulfed him, which his air-conditioned car hadn’t allowed to in many years. He was standing at the mouth of 17^th Lane, the place he hadn’t entered since long. Very long. It was the lane occupied mostly by poor people having their miserable dwellings on its either side. It was the lane he used to dash through over his bicycle as a kid.

Of late he hadn’t even thought about having a peep inside the 17^th Lane, one of the most notorious parts in the high society. But today, the lane offered him the closest way to his home, the one that would do a favour to his much pampered legs.

I will have to change, or I will well and truly break, Mat told himself and entered the lane, forcing himself to accept the truth that he was just as poor now as the few people who hurried up and down the way.

The roadside beef seller at the entrance had packed his mobile shop and was moving. Mat left him behind and gazed around wistfully. Nothing much had changed there. Only, the buildings had gone older over the years, some now were apparently vacant and some ramshackle. But the trees, the houses, the people, the smell… the life out there, it was all still all the same.

Mat laughed at his perfect decline, within his very first hour back to poverty he was in the 17^th Lane. Strange, but true.

‘You look sad.’ A husky voice disturbed his thoughts. Stopping, he looked in the direction.

A drunkard was looking at him sitting on a roadside bench. His hair was dishevelled and he had a stubble fortnight old. His cloths made of cheap fabric were probably stained and definitely stinking. He drank through a bottle, at the bottom of which some liquor churned.

Aw, a drunkard! Mat hated liquor. He hated every little thing that made men loose their logic and self control. ‘A man should always be in his wake to keep moving ahead’ was what he believed.

‘I can tell a sad man when I see one,’ the drunkard droned in a sluggish tone. His voice echoed on the walls around. The lane was almost hushed now, save a man or two walking nearby. The place looked quiet dismal in the low light cast by the distantly planted street lamps and the trifling moonlight.

Mat decided to leave.

‘Don’t walk away, friend,’ said the man. ‘Come, sit here with me. Tell me about your worries. I just might have a solution.’

Mat halted again and immediately wondered at himself for doing so. The very idea that a roadside drunkard’s offer interested him was a proof of his helplessness. He knew there was no way the drunkard could help him regain even a shred of what he had lost, yet he felt an inclination towards the man. He was lonely, he understood, and needed some company. All the well if a total stranger gave it to him, at least he wouldn’t know of Mat’s terrible fall. So ready to change with the times, Mat Grin, the founder of Grin Incorporations, sat beside the drunkard.

‘There you are,’ said the drunkard taking in a big gulp. ‘My friend is really sad. Unhappy, is he?’

‘What makes you think that?’ asked Mat unbuttoning his tweed jacket.

‘Simple. If you were happy, you wouldn’t be here,’ the drunkard said, his voice was shaky due to drinking. ‘You would be spending cash at some rich place.’

Mat laughed in a dejected tone. ‘Ahh, true. But gone are those days now,’ he said. ‘Bankrupt, I am. I’d never go to a rich place again.’

‘Hmm, that might be true, if you say so,’ said the drunkard observing the moon after a while. ‘However, it does not mean you’ll never be happy again.’

‘I don’t get you,’ said Mat. ‘All that I had earned was due to a very lucky chance I got a decade back. Do whatever I may, I’ll never get that chance again. And the life of an ordinary man can never make me happy. I am not used to it.’

‘There is a solution, friend…,’ said the drunkard. ‘It is my business to make sad people like you happy.’

‘What? As in, that is your profession?’ asked Mat amazed.

‘Aye. Perfect. I am a Fun Agent,’ the drunkard said.

‘Interesting. And Weird,’ said Mat. ‘Never heard of such a profession before. What exactly do you do?’

‘I make unhappy people happy.’

‘Yes, but how?’ asked Mat. ‘How will you make me happy like I was a couple months ago.’

‘You did not have the worries of life then, friend,’ said the drunkard. ‘I mean, even if you had some, you were not forced to think about them all the time. And there were ways out of those troubles. That’s why you were happy.’

‘And you can help me achieve that again?’

‘Yes. That and more besides.’

‘How?’

‘Simple. You’ll have to be a part of those people who are always happy,’ said the drunkard.’

‘Ahh. Where are such people, man,’ asked Mat in disbelief. ‘I don’t see them.’

‘True, you don’t see them, but they are everywhere,’ the drunkard said. ‘You don’t notice them because You yare too burdened by the worries of life.’

‘How do I notice them, then?’ asked Mat. ‘What do I have to do?’

‘I’ll show you the way,’ the drunkard said with a wink, then took out another bottle from his pocket and stuck it forward. ‘Drink it.’

Mat’s amazement vanished in a jiffy. ‘So that is your way to make unhappy people happy, eh?’ he said suddenly uninterested. ‘Simple it is, indeed. But no, I don’t drink liquor.’

‘Aww, my friend,’ said the drunkard taking up a tone of persuasion. ‘This is not liquor. This is a solution to all your worries. Drink it and you’ll be in a world where no worries will touch you.’

Should I drink it? Mat asked himself fixing his gaze at the bottle. What was the point in not loosing his logic now, not loosing the self control? He had nothing to guard anymore. And there was no other way to get out of his miseries. Well, he needed to change with times.

He grabbed the bottle and emptied the bitter liquid inside in one swallow. It felt as though his throat had been clutched, but only for a moment though. He closed his eyes shut and contracted his face and let the sensation pass. Then he felt lighter. He dropped the bottle and enjoyed loosing himself in completely another world. He dropped his head back ad felt all the worries leave him. The drunkard was right, it seemed.

After a while he opened his eyes. The drunkard was still drinking from his own bottle. ‘I think you were right, friend,’ he said to the drunkard and stood up to go.

Just as he was about to leave, he heard a man laugh nearby, merrily. A little surprised he looked at the bench on the other side of the street. Three or four men had gathered there while he had been drinking. They were having fun together. He felt a pang towards them, they looked the happy lot the drunkard had been talking about. He crossed the street.

‘Welcome, my friend,’ said one of the men.

‘So you just learned the trick from our Fun Agent, eh?’ asked another one.

‘Yes, it looks like it works,’ said Mat happily.

‘Oh yes, it does,’ said one, ‘It works for all of us, you see. You leave behind all your worries and we get another friend. The more, the merrier.’

‘It’s good to join you,’ said Mat not as earnestly as he felt. It was strange that he was amidst a pack of scoundrels. And even stranger that he was trouble-free as he hadn’t been in some time.

‘What trouble nagged you?’ asked an old man.

‘Ah, I got bankrupt,’ said Mat.

‘Oh, sad. But don’t tell me you have nothing to give to the fun agent now?’

‘What, no, there was no deal as such,’ answered Mat a little perplexed.

‘Well look, the rule is,’ explained one of the men, ‘you give all your belongings to the fun agent, because he gets money from nowhere else. When he gets money he can have liquor and food. As long as he is up and alive we keep getting new friends.’

‘Yes,’ said the other man. ‘We gave him whatever little we had.’

‘I won’t do it,’ said Mat, ‘All that the court will let me have is a very little amount and possessions to live. I won’t them to him.’

‘You’ll give them to him. Sooner or later. And you’ll do it wilfully.’

‘That’s weird,’ said Mat. ‘You pay him so that he makes more men drink liquor and they join you?’

‘He didn’t make you do that,’ said a man mischievously.

‘Oh, that’s what he did,’ said Mat. ‘You were not here. He made me drink liquor.’

‘You are mistaken,’ the old man said. ‘We were here all the time and watching you. Only, you did not notice us, because you were not one of us. I heard the Fun Agent tell you it wasn’t liquor, and he meant it. It was poison, my friend. A solution to all the worries of life. Liquor was what he was drinking.’

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