I wasn’t mugged, only robbed

Travellers are a vulnerable lot. They live outside their safety zones, wandering in territories where they’re strangers. Many may not even have done their home-work, like reading travel blogs or sites like Lonely Planet that offer good advice. Even if they’ve, it’s actually impossible for the average traveller to know in advance that he shouldn’t walk alone, say, on a particular street in downtown Chicago after dark. They do that and get mugged. Nor would they know, for example, which eatery sells poor food. They eat there and get a bad stomach – the worst thing that can happen to a traveller. But it’s all in the game. These are challenges that make travel rewarding – at least in retrospective, when you are in a mood to boast. At the moment of experiencing, you’re nothing but a bundle of misery.

I’m surprised I never got mugged in New York which has, like many American cities, a bad crime record. The reason I’m surprised is that it was in Bronx that I stayed in my first couple of visits to New York, in the late 80’s and early 90’s – a district that New Yorkers, especially well-to-do Indians, refer to with dread and disdain; because, the majority population in Bronx is non-white, largely Afro-Americans, and their tattered lives are entangled in social problems that include crime. I stayed there with my friend Benny Kottiri who was at that time a student with a part-time job. The low rents in Bronx helped him.

I was exploring New York with a first-timer’s greed and invariably returned to Bronx late at night. The late-night trains were themselves problematic: near-deserted, populated mainly by the unfortunate outcasts of capitalism – poor, disadvantaged people often under the influence of alcohol or drugs, unpredictable and constantly on the edge of violence. My friend lived off the Bedford Park Boulevard in Bronx, in the vicinity of the Fordham University. (At that time, I didn’t know that Edgar Allen Poe’s house was nearby.) The lonely walk from the subway station to my friend’s apartment along the deserted streets was something no newcomer to Bronx would normally undertake.

My friend didn’t believe in injecting fear and had, in a matter-of-fact way, merely asked me to be careful. His advice was to keep a low profile, not to attract attention by dress or behaviour, but simply fade into the background – just pretend that one didn’t exist. I did exactly that. I remember I was really scared inside me as I walked along the deserted streets. I doubt if it was courage that prompted me. It was some kind of stubbornness. I think I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. And, in any case, there was no other way but do it. Every now and then I would think I heard footsteps behind me and turn back in terror. But day after day I reached Benny’s apartment intact, to see him waiting with a smile and a mug of beer. I believe it was the chameleon strategy he advised that paid off. It has stood by me in all my travels since: merge into the background as if you were a shadow. Benny moved on from New York, and my shelter there became my friend Manohar Thomas’s house in Staten Island, in general a safe locality.

How I was robbed in Rome had a touch of farce about it, though with a little difference in details it could’ve been a sad story. It was my first visit to Rome and I was, so to say, in a daze. History surrounded you everywhere, the power and pomp of the Church overawed you on every side, art and architecture swept you off your feet. The endless walks were tiring – and frustrating, because of the language problem. But day after day I kept going with the printed map of Rome in my hand, losing my way, and sometimes going round and round to get to a place that was right next to me.

Thus, one day I had reached the Coliseum, which, of course, is something nobody misses in Rome. I was wearing a light jacket with pockets on the sides. Since I had been warned by the nuns of the convent-turned-hostel where I stayed about pickpockets and snatchers, I had put away my cash and passport in an inner pocket of the shirt I wore under the jacket. In order to free my hands to take pictures, I had pushed the city map into one of the jacket pockets. I stood transfixed before the Coliseum, recalling its tumultuous and bloody history, imagining the roar of the spectators, visualizing the gladiators, the wild animals and their human preys.

Just then a teenage girl and two young boys in scruffy clothes – poor, and seemingly of another nationality - approached me and made begging signs. I did feel sympathetic but a shoestring traveller has no provision to give alms in a foreign country and I signalled no to them. In a flash, they had surrounded me and their hands were all over me. I held on to the camera with all my strength. Luckily, its strap was round my neck. Then they sped away. I stood stunned. My first reaction was to check the money and passport in my shirt’s inner pocket. They were intact. My hands went to my jacket pockets and I discovered what they had taken away: the map, a kerchief and some useless papers.

I looked around and, to my great surprise, found that the children hadn’t vanished at all. They were standing a few hundred feet away and examining the loot. I heard them exclaiming in disappointment. What happened next was what made this robbery memorable. The girl ran towards me with the map, kerchief and papers crumpled into a ball in one hand, screaming what I suspect were expletives in her language, and from a safe distance threw it at me, spit at me and then just walked away, as if that was the most normal thing to do.

It was clear that she was angry that I had failed her expectations. I found her reaction utterly honest. A niggardly foreigner had foiled her attempt to earn her daily bread. She, as a poor person, had a right to be angry. I picked up the crumpled map and kerchief, dusted them off and put them back in my pocket. I still needed them. The threesome watched me from a distance. I had a feeling that when they saw me retrieve the map and kerchief and put them into my pocket, they, used to well-heeled tourists, must’ve felt disgusted in having had anything to do with such a pauper. How could I explain to them that one of the privileges of being a shoestring traveller is that one doesn’t have to feel bad about being stingy. I still have that map in my files. But I dread to think what would’ve happened if my cash and passport were in my jacket pocket along with the map. This little story would’ve been a tearful one.

My first experience of an outright theft was in Durban, South Africa, and it was eerie. It was my first visit to Africa. Three friends, long-time residents of SA, Padmanabhan Unni, Thomas Mathew (who is no more) and Cherian John had kindly offered to drive me around KwaZulu-Natal province for a few days. We had visited several interesting places including Pietermaritzburg railway station where Gandhiji was famously thrown out of a train and also his Phoenix centre from where he had published the newspaper 'Indian Opinion'.

Finally, we were in Durban and had checked in to a hotel on the beachfront. My friends had stayed there earlier with their families and had a good opinion of it. But they were in for a shock. The whole area had changed. The locality had been taken over by drug- and-prostitution mafias, blessed by politicians and the police. Open violence erupted in the streets every now and then. Normal businesses had moved out. The hotel manager, who was of Indian origin, told us that he had lost his regular customers and business was in trouble. He also warned us that theft from guest rooms was common and we should be very careful.

We had spent time in town till late, returned to our room – a large one with four beds – and slept. I was the first to get up. I was surprised to find on the water closet in the toilet, four wallets stacked one above the other, mine one of them. The only thought that came to me was that my friends had done it to keep them safe – I can’t remember the logic behind this idiotic thought. I picked up my wallet and went out, locking the room, because I had to call my host in Botswana.

It was at the phone booth that I discovered that there was no money in my wallet. Even then it didn’t strike me that I had been robbed. Because how could I be robbed when I was sleeping in a room with three others and the door was locked? I thought I had perhaps placed the cash – which was not much - under my pillow for greater safety and had forgotten. We all had one drink too many the previous night.

I returned to the room to find my friends in shock. They had lost their cell phones too - precious things which had just come into vogue. I discovered to my horror that my travellers’ cheques, which held the funds for the whole 4-month journey, were gone too. It was a shattering blow. The thief, however, hadn’t touched my passport. There was little else to do except talk to the manager. He could only sympathise with us. He examined the room and pointed out to us that the bathroom window had been unlatched. He was frank. He said there was no doubt an employee had done it to admit the thief. But calling the police would only invite more trouble for us.

And he added, ‘You’re lucky you didn’t wake up when the thief was inside. Things could’ve got worse.’ We thanked the African spirits of the previous night for the unshakable slumber it had thrown us into. My friends soon sorted out the temporary monetary crisis. I hadn’t lost much cash. And, the American Express promptly - miraculously, as it seemed to an Indian like me, used to dishonest after-sale services – replaced the lost travellers’ cheques.

But it was in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia, that I encountered a startlingly different method of attack. My friend Abdul Gafoor of Kodungalloor and I were at the 4^th century Narikala Fortress that overlooks the city. Two little boys – perhaps 8-10 years old – approached us to beg. I saw their mother keeping watch at a distance. We said no. Suddenly one boy sat down on the ground and wrapped his two legs around mine in a vice-like grip. I nearly fell off my feet. However I tried, I couldn’t extricate my legs from his hold. He turned and twisted like a wrestler with every move I made to free myself. The only way out perhaps was to enter into a wrestling match. Imagine doing that to a little boy – and in a foreign country. Gafoor stood by helplessly. He too didn’t dare to touch the boy. It seemed so unreal. My situation had terrifyingly become somewhat like that of Sindbad the Sailor trapped by the Old Man of the Sea.

Just at that moment a saviour appeared in the shape of a graceful old lady. She saw my predicament, and from a distance shouted at the boy and his mother. I do not know what she said but the boy released me and took to his heels. Then the old lady came up to us and spoke to us and we could figure out she was apologising. We thanked her from the depths of our hearts. The little boy of course wouldn’t have known the meaning of what he was doing. He had been sent out to earn his bread and this was his work – like that of the children at the Coliseum. As a child of poverty, he needed no justification for his action – just as the rich needs none for theirs.
Paul Zacharia is a well-known Indian writer and columnist.