Ever had the unpleasant experience of losing your wallet to the nimble-fingered ones? Despite being a veteran user of Mumbai’s awfully crowded suburban trains and BEST buses, pickpockets have never ever sullied my commuting as though they fight shy of me. Have they divined that picking my pocket would yield nothing but disappointment? Far from it. Interestingly, the reason for my being able to repulse the pickpockets, I imagine, is that I have the ability to keep them at arm’s length by a sheer knack of telling a pickpocket from the crowd. Gazing at a man’s face, body language and movements, I can discern whether he is one. If he is, I up my guard and don’t lower it until I’m out of harm’s way. Not many are endowed with this faculty and they suffer at the hands, er, fingers of the pickpockets. Such people are an easy meat for the thieves. But my skill has its demerits too. It entails a certain amount of observation of the person before one comes to a conclusion. If the suspect is a male, there is no problem. However, in case of female suspects, such observation could be misconstrued as ogling.
Mumbai was once a disciplined city. Bus passengers observed queues religiously; seldom jumped them. Not that they don’t queue up now. They do, but the line exists only until the bus appears on the scene. Once it does the bus stop becomes a battlefield, the queue disappears into thin air, nay, into the bus in a mad disorderly rush. It is such ruckus that the pickpockets seek.
Once the chaos at the bus stop took its toll on my wife who had until then nursed a notion that her purse in the handbag she carried was as safe as a baby in the womb. The other day, when a smart guy unzipped her bag and made off with the purse, possibly while she was boarding the bus, she found herself cursing her for harbouring a false sense of safety. She realised then that the bag had failed to perform its office. Some guys after helping themselves to the wallet in the bag don’t stop at that. They seem to think it chivalrous to zip the bag up as if to save the victim the bother of doing it! The unsuspecting victim, finding the bag intact would not miss the purse until he/she reaches for it. Such are the idiosyncrasies of the pickpockets.
A pickpocket in Roald Dahl’s The Hitchhiker calls himself a ‘fingersmith’. This anatomical euphemism is apt. For like goldsmiths and silversmiths who mould gold and silver respectively with skill to the required form, the pickpocket shapes his fingers and masters their use.
Even politicians, regarded as invincible, get beaten by them. One recalls with amusement a year or so old newspaper report which said, pickpockets in Bihar had taken a fancy to politicians’ flashy mobile phones and filched a few. One minister, himself a victim, explained that these thieves, disguising themselves as party workers, would flock to politicians and get away with their mobile phones. Dear minister, what would you say about criminals-turned-politicians, masquerading as honest men, conning the common man?