Heartwarming Reunion: DSP Finds Vegetable Vendor Who Showed Him Kindness 14 Years Ago
DSP tracks down vegetable vendor whose act of kindness 14 years ago he never forgot In Bhopal on Saturday, a Madhya Pradesh police vehicle pulled up next to vegetable vendor Salman Khan, who grew nervous at the sight of a Deputy Superintendent of Police calling out his name.
DSP Santosh Patel finally found the man he was searching for. During the last 14 years since they met, Khan lost all the fat tissue but he identified him at a lip scar.
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He called out Patel, and the latter broke a smile to ask him, “Mereko pehchante ho? (Do you remember me?)”. Khan replied, “Bilkul achi tarah se, sir. Aap sabzi lene aate the. (I remember you well, sir. You would come to take vegetables).
The two hugged each other, rekindling the bond forged long ago when Khan’s random act of kindness helped Patel, who was then a struggling engineering student in Bhopal. Now posted in Gwalior’s Behat division, Patel said: “I am the first graduate in my family of 120 people in Panna. I am also the first police officer in my family.”. I went against all odds to Bhopal to study engineering and then prepared for MP Public Service Commission. There were days when I did not have money to buy food. Khan was kind enough to feed me tomatoes and baingan. He has a heart of gold, she says.
Khan, busy catering to customers in the Apsara Talkies area of Bhopal said, “I got scared when the police van came. But when I saw Patel, I found a long lost friend. I sell vegetables to thousands of people – nobody remembers my face, they move on. But Patel came and met me.”. I have followed him on social media and admired the policeman he became. Never knew he was going to meet me. He gave me a box of sweets and some cash. He remembers his roots, remembers me. That, in short was a dream come true. The two men, both 33 years of age, met for the first time in 2009-10 when Patel shifted out of his native village Devgaon in Panna. His father was a craftman while most of his family members were local postmen. Patel’s elder sister got married at a very young age and now wants to complete her B.Com inspired by her brother.
“I used to study under a kerosene lamp and did not have money for food at times. I did odd jobs for a living. That’s when I became friends with Khan,” he recalled.
Khan, who has five brothers and three sisters, comes from a poor family in Bhopal. His brothers sell vegetables and drive autos while his sisters are married. Khan and Patel would talk to each other every day.
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“He was like me – a poor man. I understood him. Sometimes, I gave him vegetables; it’s not a big deal. Why shall I earn money by keeping a poor boy hungry? Many students were given free vegetables by me. Patel would even help me with work at times,” said Khan.
Patel completed his engineering course but could not get any employment. He returned back to his village and joined as a forest guard in Panna. He did not stop studying and cracked MPPSC in 2017. He served as DSP in Betul and Niwari and further shifted to Gwalior. He had also managed to gain a significant following on social media — 2.4 million-plus followers on Instagram — where he was uploading pictures of his rural policing in MP, recited poems with farmers, talked about the plight of the poor in the Hindi belt, and met students from poor families, distributing them school uniforms and bags. But all those memories of Khan lingered in his head. “I tried to meet him all these years but was never posted in Bhopal. During a four-day training programme, I finally saw him in the same place where he was 14 years ago,” Patel said.