So, I have won the lottery. The UK Online lottery! Well, at least, that’s what this mail states. “After this automated computer ballot, your e-mail address emerged as one of ten winners in the FIRST category for the THIRD prize”. And at thousands of pounds for no work and my mail id bringing me luck, well, what can I ask for.

This is what the mail said :

The National Lottery is pleased to inform you that you emerged a winner of £3.000.000 GBP in the last concluded National Lottery online draws on 17 th Oct ‘07. However, no tickets were sold butall email addresses were assigned to different ticket numbers for representation and privacy.

After this automated computer ballot, your e-mail address emerged as one of ten winners in the FIRST category for the THIRD prize.Your prize award has been insured with your e-mail address and will be transferred to you upon meeting the requirements, statutory obligations, verifications, validations and satisfactory report. .

So, they said. And interesting it did seem !

There are two factors that drive all of the world, I read somewhere : “ Fear & Greed” ! Over the past so many months there have been ever so many lottery ‘winners’ who were supposed to send in ‘some’ money to a foreign account to ‘meet requirements, statutory obligations, verifications, validations and satisfactory report’.

Well, the money that these ‘winners’ were sending was booty for somebody else. People kept sending in money. Week after week. Some demand was made on a inventive pretext. “Transfer Fee’. “Currency Tax’ ! And the booty was just around, in the minds of people. They could almost reach it if they paid the ‘tax’. And finally, they did pay some ‘tax’. For money that stayed in their minds.

No way was i going to give my address, telephone number and bank account details. Well, maybe I am missing the thousands of pounds. Maybe I am driven by Fear ! what say ? Maybe I have actually won the lottery!

But what perhaps almost gives me a conniption fit is this: I emerged as one of the ten winners for the third prize ! This is a fictitious prize given by some gangster holed up in front of some computer in some land. He must realise that he is sending this to an Indian. Where 3,00,000 people fight to get admitted into colleges which do not have more than 7000 seats. The first prize matters dude !!!!

Oh boy ! The First Prize & me seem destined not to meet! Even in the concocted imagination of a creative criminal !!