Would you judge a person…

Who, barely a week after having connected with you tells you that he needs money urgently because his mother has had a kidney failure coupled with some other complications and asks if you could lend him some money for her treatment? And then in half hours time you see the person updating his profile pictures, replying to comments?

Would you judge that person?

‘Cos, I’m about to. And I won’t pretend that I am not hurt or feeling a bit let down.

Why, because for one, I expected that a situation as dire and critical as his mother’s kidney failure would have got him so worried that the last thing on his mind should have been to come on fb and share a holiday picture and reply to comments! This person in question, who had had me believe that he had quit a well-paid job abroad that he held for about 8 years to come back and care for his ailing mother, who messaged saying his mother was everything to him and that he needed the cash urgently by that very afternoon, seemed anything but hassled, to put it mildly.

I maybe wrong in judging him. This may just be his way to cope with the grief. Yet, this demeanor unsettles me.

Secondly, I was taken aback by the freedom with which way he approached me for financial help. Could someone be so desperate to see financial help from someone they barely knew? We had reconnected just about a week back.

He was my classmate who was hardly a friend back then, even though I always desired to know him better and be his friend. We were in the same class from grade 7 to grade 10 after which the he left the school. I had no contact with the person, never knew where he was, what he did. Neither did he bother to stay connected.

And now after more than 2 decades, he has emerged out of nowhere and put our rekindling friendship in an embarrassing situation.

He tells me that he works for a software company, his wife works in a reputed multinational, also that he will be travelling to the US soon to meet his sister. So then if he is earning well, his wife too and he has a sister living abroad, not to mention the ‘friends’ he once said he was in touch with and very close to, why would he need me, a mere acquaintance to lend him money? Unless the picture he has drawn of his hunky dory life is a facade.

I try putting myself in his shoes and wonder what if I were to be in a desperate situation like that. Would I be comfortable seeking financial help from an acquaintance? And I find myself realizing that I would have probably not been comfortable asking for such a help from the closest of my friends or family members, let aside an acquaintance. Anyway, I hope and pray such a dire situation never arises in my life.

Perhaps I am analyzing way too much into all this. But I can’t help wondering if I have been taken for a ride. If a trust has been broken..