Doubling The Wealth
Chamanlal was a well-known merchant. He traded in several items- from grain to gold. He was already one of the richest men of his city, but he never stopped dreaming of growing even richer! A time came when the rich men of the city started living in an abnormally extravagant manner. This gave rise to a rumor that someone in the city was manufacturing counterfeit coins. "Only if I knew the secret of making false money! I could then become a man of billions overnight," Chamanlal told himself and sighed. One day, while returning home from his shop he noticed a gentleman giving a handful of coins to a beggar. He greeted the gentleman and said, "You must be very rich to be able to give so much money to a beggar!" "Do you wish to be as rich as me?" asked the gentleman who gave out his name as Sudarshan. "Well, who does not wish to have more than he has? I must admit that I will like to be richer than I am," replied Chamanlal after some hesitation. The gentleman lowered his voice and said, "Let me be frank with you. The coins I passed on to the beggar are fake ones. But nobody can make them out from the real ones. Here are ten fake coins. Try to pass them as real in any shop. I bet, you will be successful." Chamanlal accepted the coins in his trembling hand and got into a cloth shop. He bought a piece of linen for the money.
The shop keeper did not express any doubt about the genuineness of the coins. "Surely, you do not doubt my statement any more!" said Sudarshan patting on Chamanlal's back. "Now, listen to my proposal. You give us one hundred coins. We give you two hundred counterfeit coins. You receive a hundred percent profit. Is this not a fair deal?" "It is," admitted Chamanlal with great excitement. He carried a hundred coins to Sudarshan the same evening. Sudarshan kept them carefully in a box, but from another box he picked up coins rather carelessly and handed them over to Chamanlal, saying, "I don't mind if there are more than two hundred!" Delighted, Chamanlal found the amount to be two hundred and twenty. He was still more thrilled when a rice merchant accepted the coins without hesitation. Thereafter he regularly gave a hundred coins to Sudarshan and received double the amount from him. One day Sudarshan confided to him that they were going to shift their place of operation to another city. That shocked Chamanlal. "You can do one thing. Carry as much money as you like to our main center which is in a village. You can bring back double for the last time," suggested Sudarshan. Chamanlal loaded all his bags of coins in a cart and guided by Sudarshan went to a village miles away from the city. While returning with two fully loaded carts Sudarshan provided him with two guards. Midway they noticed some sepoys of the king coming in their direction, riding horses, "There is an inquiry going on to trace the source of counterfeit money. If these sepoys get curious and find out that the carts are loaded with counterfeit coins, we can very well say that we have nothing to do with these carts," proposed one of the guards.