Life is never fair. A popular sentiment. And no one knew it better than Mr. Bountiful. But in this case, it was unique. For you see, this particular sentiment is usually expressed by those who were dealt, or rather sure felt that, they lacked in the luck department. But the fact that it was Mr. Bountiful who expressed it, was what made it all the more interesting. For, Mr. Bounty's life had always been full of, well, bounty. Everything he touched prospered. It was not even due to business acumen or extraoridinary talent. It was just plain dumb luck. But Mr. Bounty, bless his heart, never knew or realised that.

He was not a man burdened with too much brains."Must have your wits sharp," was what he told everyone. It was pure irony, but they couldn't argue with him either, he certainly knew success.

Money and a fool are soon parted. Though Mr. Bounty was certainly not clever, his money did not part him, Providence was on his side. Men of much greater capacity had tried to swindle him. But he had always been safe, without the least idea of the schemes against him. The world had always been an easy place for him.

But why then the sentiment of life not being fair you ask?

If Mr. Bounty's life was God's experiment on seeing whether bestowing endless luck on humans was the key to happiness, the result would have been a failure. Despite having everything in the world, go his way all the time, Mr. Bounty was not a happy man. He felt the world was a dull place with nothing to challenge his intellect. He never understood the thrill of gambling and that is what essentially life is. The thrill of not knowing whether he would be on the top or the bottom was alien to Mr. Bounty. He was always on top. He always won. And when people came to him with their hard luck stories, he could never empathize. As a result philanthropy did not make sense to him and he did not partake because he was not a hypocrite and had never had a reason to be one.

The murmurs of his selfishness had been his constant companion along with jealousy. It had never bothered him in the beginning. Infact he had seen it as a sign of success. The more people who were jealous of you, the more successful you were. That was how Mr. Bounty had always seen it. But now, in his old age, the constant company of jealousy and the resulting isolation was becoming too much for Mr. Bounty. He cursed his superiority and fueled by rage, he decided to record all his grievances against the world and what exactly he thought of everyone, which was on no kind terms, and decided to make it public. After which of course he would commit suicide. That will show them, he thought.

He sat alone, on a cold night with all the lights turned off except in his bedroom, he switched on the camera to record his deathbed confession so to speak. He started a long winded speech about his humble beginnings and went on to talk about his crippling loneliness that he felt everyday, and the depression that came with it. He spoke about how people had always been jealous of him and what idiots they all were. He mentioned them by name and said in no kind terms what he thought of them. At last, he swallowed a bottle full of pills, and that was that.

They found him, next day, in the bathroom, with his face down. Along with him, they found his video. When they played it, everyone who watched it, was touched. How sad it must have been to be so lonely, they all wondered. They felt ashamed of themselves for being so jealous. They vowed to be better.

The video stopped abruptly just before recording his rant about those around him, for the battery had died and as a result, it was never recorded. As for Mr. Bounty, instead of a life threating dose of sleeping pills, he had swallowed vitamin C tablets, which had given him a severe case of diarrhoea. He never had much brains really. He was treated for it, and was sent home the same day. When he returned, his house was full of people filled with remorse, and he found what he had been looking for, adoration. So it was a happy ending for Mr. Bounty after all.

Would you call it Providence? Or dumb luck? Or just a coincidence of a machine malfunctioning? Well, all of us are entitled to our own opinion. I myself think, God was simply not a very good sport about failing in his experiment.