Thief!

“On my first day in New York, a guy asked me if I knew where Central Park was. When  I told him I didn’t, he said, ‘Do you mind if I mug you here?’” Paul Merton

In life, there are always those things you read or hear about, but they never become quite real until you experience them for yourself. I was always aware that things like robberies, chain- snatching and muggings happened everyday but I guess somehow my mind processed it as just something that happened in newspapers; something that happened to other people: until some thief snatched my chain off my neck last Monday.
Here I was, blithely walking down the obstacle course called Regent Street with my mom, grandmother and brother, in our annual quest for that exact shade of ‘QC-brown’ cloth for our school uniforms. One minute I was lagging behind my mom and the next minute somebody was viciously grabbing at my neck, ripping off my OM gold chain.
My reflex action was (unfortunately), to just scream, not to execute some deadly Taekwondo move. Sadly, those hours of consuming every Bourne movie did nothing for my defensive reflexes.
I’d already mentally given up my chain as lost and was still frozen in place, my hand still holding my (bruised) throat but my mom, grandmother and 12-year-old brother had already taken up the chase.
I saw the man pull a knife on my mother in broad daylight. My mother, my wonderful, brave mother – without a thought for her own safety – had caught up with the thief and actually managed to grab hold of him. I guess it was her intuition that saved her from being stabbed by the knife, which he dropped as he escaped on a cycle.
Everyone gets robbed at least once in their life I guess – especially if they’re traipsing around crowded city streets – which I do but once a year. But I’m just grateful that it was just a gold chain I was robbed of and not my mother’s life.
After the incident, what bothered me most wasn’t the loss of the chain – it was the feeling of inadequacy. I felt like such a helpless buffoon with no idea how to defend myself. I had nothing – no knowledge of defence manoeuvres, absolutely no clue what to do in such a situation. Hey, I didn’t even have a can of pepper spray. That experience made me realise that I really have no inkling about self-defence.
Am I the only one so clueless? Or are other people as vulnerable? I guess they are, because people are robbed and mugged every day in Georgetown.
Experiences like these certainly make us more wary – and stereotypes, unfortunately, can be formed as the mind formulates heuristics for survival. I remember I used to think my mom was being overly cautious to make sure she had her hand bag grasped firmly or when she stopped wearing her OM chain in Georgetown – even though it’s a part of our Hindu tradition.
It’s probably human nature to not take things seriously until they actually happen to you – after all, how could you conceive of something completely alien to you? But when it happens to you, it’s something you never forget. I’ll never forget the sound of my own scream, the sound of others taking up the cry, the passivity of some bystanders, the sheer suddenness of it all, the feeling of sheer terror and panic – and yes, that little phrase authors use in books? That the character was ‘paralysed with fear’? It actually happens.