Conscience at the crossroads

By R. Lakshminarayan

Chapter 1: Confession

I am not a thief. I try to earn a living for my family. My life has a meaning and I always wanted to achieve something better. Destiny painted me gray because it left me with no money. One harsh twist of fate left me penniless and I had to indulge myself in a painful activity which tested my conscience.

I pick pockets. I have a wife and a son and they still believe that I work in an insurance company. This is not the story of my expeditions and techniques, but this is the story that crushed the purpose of my existence.

Chapter 2: Beginnings

My father was the most respectable man in the neighborhood. He was hailed as an honest, principled peon in the government hospital situated in the heart of Chirag Delhi (an urban township in 1985). I was brought up near the slum- like government quarters allotted for unskilled employees. My father never denied me anything. He took pains to send me to a good school so that I could equip myself with proper knowledge which, he could never receive. All my materialistic demands were met, as my father would buy me expensive clothes and continued to adorn his ragged, torn dhoti wherever he went. My educational capabilities were below par but my father encouraged me to do better. If I scored very poor marks in a term, my father would go to the janitor’s room in the hospital and shed tears, but he would never show disappointment on his cheerful and gentle face. After many failures and relegations, I reached high school and since higher education was more expensive my father barely managed to pay my fees at school. At this crucial juncture my mother contracted pulmonary tuberculosis and after a few months she passed away in pain and suffering. My father’s dejection was uncontrollable after her demise and her sweet memories accentuated the agonizing void in our lives. Shortly my father suffered from bouts of pneumonia and doctors linked his failing health to the depression caused by my mother’s death. Days skimmed past our deprived lives making each day more difficult and nostalgic.

On the fateful night of August 15th the rain gods poured fresh water on the parched landscape, filling the roots of magnanimous old trees with precious crystal clear water, forcing the birds to abandon their quest to conquer the sky and allowing earthworms to jiggle through perforations, digging their trenchant heads through the tender soil like spiral wires. I arrived at my home in the dark, drenched and tired. My eyes fell on a new cycle placed magnificently on the entrance gleaming from the moon light that shone on its water soaked body. My dad had bought me my first cycle, spending his lifetime savings just to see a large gleaming smile on my face. When I rushed inside the house beaming with joy, I saw my father lying on the ground, soaked in rainwater which was streaming down his nostrils. His pulse was ticking but his body was as cold as a block of ice. He had braved the rain to buy me a birthday present. As I rushed him to the hospital his miserly heart gave up hope and his stubborn lungs refused to admit fresh air in its domain. My father’s last gesture hurt my sanity and this inexplicable grief ripped my heart apart. He was my life, he was my hero and he was my God. That day destroyed all elements of faith in me and since then I have trudged a path of deceit and dishonesty with an impassive heart and a trounced soul.

Chapter 2: Habits

My aunt brought me up after my father’s demise and I spent my youth by taking up menial jobs like selling papers and delivering eggs in the locality. The income I earned from these makeshift jobs would hardly fetch me a square meal. There were days when I would ask myself about the effort my father made to educate me and my utilization of such opportunities. Such questions would increase my desperation and deepened my grief. If I couldn’t study even after working hard in school, why was God sacrificing my happiness at crucial junctures in my life? Why did he take my father away? Why was I the only one to face the burden of incapability along with the loss of dear ones? Why did God deliver pain to my father in return for his honesty? Maybe, these questions have no answers.

My elder cousin was extremely obtuse and insufferable, yet he earned a lot of money. He claimed that he was an insurance agent but I always felt something ominous about his way of life. To unravel this mystery, I kept a close watch on my cousin for a week and followed him like a shadow. He lavishly spent money on filthy entertainment and extravagant food. The only thing he brought home was the salary of an insurance agent. Where exactly was he generating such a huge income? A week later, when I followed him to a bus I discovered his secret. He was the best pickpocket I had ever seen. In fact, his swift catch was so mind-blowing that one couldn’t guess what he was doing. This revelation meant instant wealth at the expense of others, but then fate had been cruel to me and principles had evaporated from my psyche leaving it high and dry. If destiny wanted me to redeem myself and feed myself at the expense of others I was not a parasite but, a social scavenger, one could borrow some hope from people by sharing his poverty. It did seem logical to me that if something is there to be picked, why one should hesitate to grab the opportunity. My starvation gleefully approved my thoughts. My downtrodden life groped for emancipation.

Through observation I mastered this malevolent art and in no time I developed a knack of picking wallets wherever I went. It came naturally to me and I perceived my victims as a bunch of clothes bearing wallets waiting to be picked. The element of risk seldom affected me as I assumed an innocuous semblance warding off any traces of suspicion. My initial conquests were unrewarding and a tinge of remorse downplayed my confidence but the instant returns helped me trounce my scruples. As riches poured in I moved in a modest rented house and as a token of appreciation for my aunt, I sent her gifts every month. This also served as my redemption. The loot sustained my parsimonious expenditure and helped me save some money for the future. Although it may seem that picking pockets would bestow marginal returns, smart pickups and clever prey selection served me well. Soon enough I was married into a poor, unsuspecting family and in no time I had a son and in the true sense, a complete family.

My cousin may have realized that I was using the same decoy (an insurance agent) but to protect his cover, he never asked me about the transition. And I enjoyed success until someone invented the credit card.

Chapter 3: Adaptation

To sustain an occupation, one needs to move with time and change with time. He has to improvise and invent methodologies to survive. After the invention of credit cards and debit cards and various other encrypted cards, my job became more difficult. My riches vanished, largely due to my lavish spending and I was barely able to provide for my family. My hunting grounds were busses and markets where electronic systems were still unconceivable. Even in such places many people carried empty wallets. Even if they had some money on them it was too scarce to even pay for a single meal. Instead of two or three wallets a week, I had to pick around 20-25 wallets in a week and selected random locations in order to avoid investigators, who may discover some sort of a pattern if I operated without caution.

Chapter 4: The final act

As the sun dipped to the horizon blurring its shape at the edges, birds dived through the hanging bliss of orange light decorating the outline of the sky. Every beautiful sight reminded me about the irony in my own life. It prompted my mind to harvest the crop of prudence, and yet my greedy senses groped for redundant pleasures. The bus roared to a stop near the busy fish market and new boarders ascended with a renewed hope of meeting their loved ones at the fag end of the day. It had been a particularly satisfying day for me, picking 23 pockets and collecting enough money to settle my account with the neighborhood grocer. I had decided to resign for the day when I spotted a natural prey.

This man was sitting just in front of me and his wallet was gleefully peeking out of the back-pocket of his pant. I removed the wallet in a flash when the bus jumped on a speed breaker, and held it firmly in my hand. As I got off at the next stop, I recovered its contents and threw the wallet off the bridge into the depths of the river Yamuna. Pleased with my latest catch, I reached for my back-pocket to produce my wallet. I was in for a shock. My wallet was gone! It took me some time to realize that my alacrity in stealing the alluring wallet had cost me my own wallet. As I turned my dejected face to see the bus dash past the bridge, I noticed a man running towards me. He was the fellow whose wallet I had picked. As I turned my face to avoid him, he waved, gesturing me to stop. He finally stopped in front of me and said “Hey mister, you dropped your wallet on the bus. It must have fallen from your pocket while you were getting off”. I was standing still as a stone from the fear of getting caught and doubted his intentions but he smiled and continued “Today is my son’s birthday. I was going to the market to buy him a cycle. I had to work overtime and withdraw a part of my life’s savings to pay for it”.”He will be so happy to see it”. “Anyway please take your wallet, and please don’t thank me, God is great and he always helps people in trouble”. Uttering these words he handed me the wallet and ran behind another bus to catch it. Before I had any time to react, the bus sped away on the road as if nothing in the world could stop it. All the contents in my wallet were intact. I was still clutching the crumpled notes stolen from the man’s wallet. The image of my father flashed in front of me. I staggered down the road with a blank face and a trampled soul. The money in my hand was representative of my sins.

My father would have hated me today…

R. Lakshminarayan