| Once, long ago, and possibly far away, Vishnu and his beautiful wife Lakshmi were sitting in recliners. What were they doing, you ask? Watching the actions of idiot half-apes on their televisions, the first reality TV, the world of man.
Lakshmi caught a glance at a lonely blind man walking with a bent cane. She looked to her husband, the merciful preserver and asked, "How can you allow such a thing in the world as this poor, poor man?!" Vishnu gave her a cool look and asked, "My dear, what do you mean?"
"He never sees his family, he is dirty, he is poor, and there is war all around him! Have you no mercy?" His wife implored.
"Fine, my beloved. Here is a diamond." He pulled from under the recliner a diamond the size of three fists. "It will fetch an infinite price. People will come from all around simply to gaze upon it, kings will offer him their daughters to rub their hands upon it. It was to be my gift to you on our nine-hundredth wedding anniversary but I will give it to him instead. Will that satisfy you?"
Having calmed down a bit, Lakshmi nodded. Vishnu threw the diamond directly into the man's path. His cane missed it and he tripped right over it into the mud.
"Man! How is it that this stuff always happens to me?" The blind man thought to himself, "I don't think about this too often, but I really have it crappy. I can never see my family and I'm blind as a bat and must beg simply to survive. But, you know, the sun feels nice against my skin. I have that. And I know that my family is taken care of by my brother, and he is an honorable man."
Vishnu pulled from under his seat a perfect walking stick and gestured to it so Lakshmi would take notice. He tossed it to the earth in the man's path exactly so that he would trip on it. The man fell over, laughing at having fallen twice. He groped to find what he had fallen upon and felt it to be a smooth, sturdy, straight walking stick. "Surely," thought the blind man, "I must be the luckiest man alive."
Lakshmi looked a bit chagrined to her husband and asked, "Did you just teach me a lesson?"
Vishnu half smiled and answered coolly, "I don't know. Did I?" | 
