This was a piece I wrote while in college, after being pickpocketed and losing the princely sum of ten rupees. I sold this article for fifteen later and remember making a profit out of a catastrophe:

‘Pickpocket!’ shouted the crowd at the other end of the station platform. I watched as a thin, unshaven man ran towards me for dear life followed by a mob. I watched him quickly hide behind a pillar near me.

‘Please save me,’ he panted, looking at me desperately. ‘Save me from those thieves and robbers’.

‘Thieves and robbers?’ I asked, ‘It’s you who is a thief. I must tell them where you are. You are a pickpocket.’

‘I’m just a pickpocket,’ said the man. ‘But they are worse. I only pick pockets, they pick lives.’

‘Don’t make excuses,’ I said, severely, and watching the mob coming closer, ‘they look okay to me.’

‘See that fat woman in front,’ said the pickpocket, holding my shoulder.

‘It’s her money you have stolen,’ I said, shoving his hand away.

‘I have only robbed stolen money,’ said the pickpocket.

‘Stolen money?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said the pickpocket, ‘she is the one who makes and sells batata vadas outside the station.’

‘Very tasty stuff’, I said, ‘what’s wrong with that.’

‘Everything,’ said the pickpocket. ‘She uses old engine oil, drained from cars and scooters, full of metal and lead. That is what she fries the vadas in.’

‘My God,’ I shouted.

‘I pick people’s pockets,’ said the pickpocket, ‘she picks the lives of her customers. Can you see that man running next to her with the briefcase?’

‘He looks familiar,’ I said.

‘He is the local Pathan, the money lender,’ said the pickpocket. ‘He lends money to us poor people at ten percent interest per month. Today is payday. That briefcase he is carrying is full of the salaries of poor people who have borrowed from him.’

‘But he does not pick pockets,’ I said slowly.

‘No, he doesn’t,’ said the pickpocket slowly, ‘he just picks the very food from the hungry mouths of the poor.’

‘The railway policeman is coming our way,’ I said.

‘He won’t do anything,’ said the man confidently. ‘I have to share half my earnings with him every evening. He is a rich man.’

‘Are there only rogues and robbers around us?’ I asked.

‘Look’, said the pickpocket, ‘look at that man holding onto the fat lady whose money was stolen.’

‘A good man,’ I said, ‘helping a woman in distress.’

‘No,’ said the pickpocket, ‘he loves to touch women, hold on to them and brush them in a crowd. You will find him every day at the station doing the same.’

‘But he does not pick pockets,’ I said.

‘No, he only picks the flesh of young college girls and working women,’ said the pickpocket.

I watched the crowd as they came up to me.

‘Have you seen the pickpocket? they all shouted.

‘Yes,’ I said and I heard the pickpocket gasp from his hiding place behind me, ‘but there are lots of them around and I don’t know which one you are looking for.’

I walked away from the crowd as they ran down the platform and I watched the pickpocket walk away from us crooks…!

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