A Remedy for Crime

 

If you are involved in planning and teaching a short course on crime reporting and the True Crime genre like I had to, as part of your preparation, you have to read up on crime stories from around the country and the globe. You have to read stories of murderers on Richmond Road, murderers targeting the homeless on the streets of Mumbai, accounts of killings of children, reports of rape and dismemberment and many more gruesome things.

All this reading makes you feel like you are on a late night train entering the city with the walls closing in. As the train meanders into the city, the bridges and the blue buses slowly become recognisable. But the familiarity is lost as the few houses become many, and the city lies exposed. The yellow hue of the sodium vapour lamps flicker and sting your eyes as you move past the streets. Some streets are narrow, others wide, but they are all mostly empty and quiet. Vehicles parked on the streets seem forgotten. Unseen to you are the rats that stalk the shadows, but you can feel them looking back at you. You wonder if calling these people rats feels like an insult to the rodents. These disgusting rats who leverage their wealth, caste or connections to harass and harm. Then as the train moves past cramped shanties, you think, ‘surely not all crime and injustice is punished’ and it troubles you.

Back to the everyday, as you travel home in a crowded bus from Shivajinagar. People get in and get off and you remain a strap-hanger. Around Malleshwaram circle, a man from the last row of seats waves and calls out specifically to you. You are confused. You don’t know the man, but you cautiously make your way to the back of the bus. When you get there, the middle aged man with an Urdu accent tells you that he saw you standing all the way from Shivajinagar and he wants you to sit. You politely gesture and decline because you are too moved by the act of kindness to speak. He insists saying that he’s getting off at the next stop. You regain your voice, thank him and sit. As he leaves you thank him again.

You smile for the rest of the day.
You are certain that kindness is the only light in this dark world.