The lost rupee

When I was posted in Mumbai, I had to travel extensively by local trains, like millions of others. Although the service was fast and efficient, there was a downside. Pickpockets were rampant, swarming like locusts on the trains and on the platforms. No passenger could escape unscathed from their vicious clutches. Even after travelling for years on local trains, I could never be sure when Oliver Twist’s descendants, or the Artful Dodger himself, would descend on me. Whenever a newcomer joined and was ‘baptised’ on sacrificing his purse or pouch, the event was celebrated by distributing ‘vada pau’ all around! 

Once my father came to Mumbai on a visit. In the course of our conversation, the discussion veered round to these notorious bag-snatchers. I cautioned him to be on his guard. No one had escaped intact from their wily fingers, I told him.

My father guffawed. “You mean you let a trifling pickpocket hoodwink you? What a shame!” A seasoned professor, he had confronted many notorious elements in his life. To him, pickpockets were just another unruly breed that needed to be ‘broken in’.

The next day we walked down to the train depot to catch the Borivali Fast. My father fumbled his way through the crowd but managed to get on the train. He marvelled at the way in which people had packed themselves in the compartment like sardines. The stench emanating from inside the bogey was no less ‘fishy’! 

When we reached our destination, once again the crowd swelled and swept us out. We got up and dusted ourselves. I enquired from my father how he had fared. His response was a hearty laugh. “Hats off to your pickpocket friends,” he said and turned his pockets inside out. They were empty. “I had put a one-rupee note in one pocket to entice the thief,” he said. “I don’t know when it was slickly swiped from me without my knowledge! Thank God, the thief had spared my other pocket, which contained all my currency notes.” I marvelled at his genius!

I couldn’t help but admire his vision. “I think, father, you are much too clever for the pickpockets. Knowing how they target your pockets, you didn’t put all your eggs—I mean cash—in one basket. Good thinking. But how did you decide which pocket to pack with the money?”

He smiled and quipped, “Elementary, my dear smart son!” Or was it?