Krishna was a post graduate in business management. He had come from his village in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh to the city of Hyderabad to complete his studies after his schoolling and had dreamed of being a good and a great man who would help the people in his village.

Being a man of high principles and values he couldn’t work with any one company. He joined a few companies after college in campus placements but left because he had to work against all his principles and values. His financial status was poor yet he had to do something or the other for his livelihood.

He was good at drawing and painting. But he had no money to buy any expensive colors at all to make good paintings which he could sell at the big Art galleries as they also offered good rates for the paintings that they bought from the various artists who sold them their paintings. It was also heard that the Art galleries would offer these artists anything between "15,000 rupees to a lakh of rupees" were the whispers that used to run through the markets.

But he had just enough money to buy some drawing sheets and pencils with different varying darkness just like the kajal pencils that ladies put in their eyes. Some of these were expensive, yet he managed to buy them, and also bought some kajal pencils to vary the black effects in his paintings. He put these things in a cloth bag and went to all the busy places like parks, market places, exhibitions, fairs, movie talkies and complexes.

Then he would sit at some place or the other but usually under a shady tree and start looking around at people. If he would find some one interesting; like a child playing with a ball or someone just sitting idle, some one with their friends or their beloved; he would just draw them on to the paper. He then would show it to them. Some get impressed and then give him a good renumeration while some wouldn't respond in a good manner at all. They would get annoyed at him and tell him to destroy the paper or just glare at him angrilly.

In this way he would earn just the sufficient money needed to satisfy all his basic requirements.

It was a Wednesday, the days which Krishna liked going out to draw as he would get the most favourable feelings from the crowds on these days. He selected the Maheshwary Talkies; A Cinema theater for his job today. He was dressed in his white shirt with offwhite trousers. Then he went and posted himself at one corner of the inner compound walls which over looked the gates. He looked all around but everyone was very busy moving around.

Then he saw a person who was standing out in the crowd wearing a black outfit, having a dark beard and also wearing a black cap on a hot summer afternoon. That bearded man was standing very near to the gate. Krishna decided to sketch him out. He took out his paper and pencil and started drawing him by looking at his face and his posture. He noticed that the bearded man was looking out for someone. He also noticed a sort of tension in the bearded man’s face. After 5 whole minutes, Krishna had almost finished his drawing, when he realised that just the neck was remaining.

Then he looked up at the bearded man .He drew in a sharp breath; as he saw the bearded man taking out a gun from his pocket, aiming and shooting at another man and then escaping out into the crowd. There was an utter chaos in the talkies as the people moved away from the man who was shot and ran in all the different directions fearing some more shooters as they ran. But nobody was going forward to help the man who was shot. Krishna was much to dazed to even run forward after all that had happened in front of his eyes in a fraction of seconds.

Then a girl appeared out of the crowd who went towards the injured man to help him, then Krishna too recovering from the initial shock then went and helped her call the ambulance and took the man to the hospital. The doctors could do little for him by operating on him to remove the bullet. But yet they said that the chances of his survival were less, yet they would keep him in the I.C.U. for further observation.

They told this to Krishna and Leena who had brought him there. They asked them about their family members, but both did not know him. They related to the doctors that they had found him in this condition at the talkies. The doctors thanked them for their bravery and the soundness of their mind to think of the person infront rather than save themselves by just blindly leaving the injured to die helplessly on the road with out any medication. They said if needed, the doctors would call them if they were to beome witnesses for the police if a case was registered.
They both thanked the doctors and left the hospital.

He went to home but was in a disturbed mood. What had to be done with that painting?? Whether to give that painting to the police or not...? If he gives it up to them Would they believe him or not?? These were some of the questions that ran in his mind. He decided to confide in Leena as they had spoken to each other earlier that day. Upon hearing his side of the entire incident, she calmly told Krishna to go and give the drawing over to the police station as this was the best thing to do rather than to sit at home and feel guilty about not going to the police when the murderer was still at large. At last he decided to give the painting up to the police station closest to his home. The picture soon caught the attention of the senior police officers and it was reported over to the commissioner's office.

The Commissioner then decided to call Krishna to his office. The next day, Krishna went over to the police commissioner's office and met him. He narrated the entire story to the commissioner as he had seen and had drawn. The police commissioner then showed him the paper on which he had drawn the face of the murderer and asked him if this was the paper that he had submitted and Krishna acknowledged it.

The commissioner was silent for a while and then he summoned someone on the phone. After about 2 minutes, a man entered the room. Krishna looked up at him and was surprised as he was the murderer himself. Then the commissioner said “ He is Mr.Sayed, a special officer from the CBI. The man whom he killed was a notorious criminal. We arrested him on many occasions, but he escaped as he got a lot of support from the local politicians and other influencial people. He was a very dangerous man. So I had appointed Syed to kill him in an undercover encounter so as to prevent any political uproar over a proper police encounter. This was kept very confidential and was known only to me, Syed and two more senior officers only."

The commissioner was then very impressed with Krishna’s job. He was given a job of painting all the criminal’s faces according the clues given in by the witnesses.
Finally Krishna had a wonderful job that would allow him to pursue his first love and the art of painting and drawing. He would also never have to make any compromises with his high values and principles that he always believed in. Leena and Krishna became great friends as time passed.


The End