Criminal Acts
A History of Theft
May 16, 2026. 7:10 PM
The auto rickshaw rolls to a stop. I rummage in my duffle bag looking for some loose change. The rickshaw driver doesn’t accept payments via UPI. There is no smartphone perched on the handlebar of his auto. Perhaps he has not yet mastered the art of driving while looking at reels. Perhaps, he doesn’t even like reels.
‘Thank you,’ I tell him as I hand over some coins — and I mean it. There is much to admire about a man who does not like reels. Besides, when it comes to auto drivers, my bar is quite low. If they don’t zip past me, ignoring my plaintive wave, they instantly earn my approval. Unfortunately, very few auto drivers seem to care about my approval.
But this man — grey-haired and bespectacled — slows down when he sees me outside my gym. He nods when I name my destination. We share a short ride in companionable silence. Conversation is not necessary for me to gauge his character. His aura points, as the kids say, are off the charts. There hangs around him an air of decency and integrity. I have no doubt he is a solid fellow, a man of high moral standing who is guided by virtue. And so, when I express my gratitude I do so with feeling, throwing in a warm smile. I am still smiling when I cross the street. It is only when I enter my apartment building that the smile sputters because I realise I’m missing my phone.
I check my bag. I pat my pockets. I check my bag again. Shoes, yes; bottle, yes; damp towel beginning to smell foul, yes. Phone, no. Did I leave it at the gym? I keep forgetting to collect my things after a workout. Once home, I ask Simran to call my phone. It rings on and on and on, interminably. She calls my trainer. He can’t see it but he promises to check. A minute later, he calls her back. It’s not there. He tried calling my phone too, and it kept ringing. Simran turns to me as I pace the floor.
‘Did you leave it in the auto?’
‘Yeah, I guess. Call again. Maybe the auto driver hasn’t noticed it yet. I’m sure he’ll return it. He was a good guy.’
I was twelve when my electric-blue Hercules bicycle was stolen. The cycle had been a birthday gift. It was a (faux) mountain bike, with those chunky tires that I thought were the pinnacle of coolness. Precisely why a boy in a suburban Kolkata neighbourhood desired a mountain bike was not a question I could answer. It was not as if I intended to go barreling down trails on the thing. I was too scared to even venture onto busy roads. My bike would stick to the lanes and alleys around my house, but for the purposes of panache it was essential that its wheels were thick and gnarly.
It was a Sunday. Like every other Sunday, I had spent the morning cleaning the cycle, caressing its frame, its wires, its seat with a love-soaked rag. The cycle was parked at the bottom of the staircase, next to the water pump. In the first few weeks, I carried it to the landing of our third-floor flat because I could not bear to be too far from it. But my affection could not sustain the effort required in heaving it up and down the stairs. And so, in the weeks that followed, I started leaving it downstairs. It was inside the building premises and should remain safe, I reasoned. And I would keep it locked at all times, of course, making sure to double-check the clasp after every use.
Later that Sunday afternoon, when I was stepping out, I saw that the spot next to the water pump, the spot where my cycle should have been standing, was empty. Once the world stopped spinning, I ran back home, my voice choking as I raised the alarm. My mother and I rushed back down and looked around the building compound. We went out to the street. We queried the ground-floor residents. We hunted for clues. It was all to no avail. The criminals had fled. The bike was gone.
Did you forget to lock it this morning, my mother asked. Did I? I couldn’t have! But what if I did? I wailed at the ambivalence of my memory, at this soul-crushing tragedy. My loss and grief, I was certain, had no parallel in human history. No person could have ever suffered as devastating a blow. Terrible things will happen to the thief, I cried. My mother smiled. You know, a cycle getting stolen is not the end of the world, she said. I flinched at her callous words, but the woman was not done. Maybe the person who took it, she added, needed the cycle more than you. Infuriated at how clueless parents could sometimes be, I stomped off to my room where I could mourn in peace, untroubled by sanctimonious claptrap.
I was miserable for days, tormented by both guilt and anger. If I had been careless in taking care of my bike, then did I deserve this outcome? But how dare someone steal what was mine! Eventually, my parents got tired of my sulking. A few months later, they bought me a new bike, and an extra lock.
May 16, 2026. 7:15 PM
Phone calls to my number are now getting disconnected. Which means someone has my phone, and is disinclined to discuss its return. Things are beginning to look grim.
I continue pacing, wringing my hands. Simran takes charge. She logs into my laptop, fires up a device tracking app, and tries to locate my phone. A blue dot appears on the screen. Simran zooms in.
‘It’s nearby, a few buildings down the road.’
I need no further encouragement. I grab her work phone and run out. She sends me the location. It is just over a hundred metres away. I jog towards it — too self-conscious to run, too anxious to walk. I’m almost there. But the road ahead of me is empty. I cannot see any auto. Simran calls me.
‘Come back. It’s moving away now. The auto must have left from there.’
My heart cuts itself loose and free falls. It settles somewhere near my bladder. More as a reflex than in hope, I call my phone again. No response. There is nothing more we can do now. It’s over. But when I get back home, Simran doesn’t let me mope. She’s moving swiftly, gathering her things.
‘Let’s take the car and chase him down. He’s still in Bandra.’
‘Huh?’
‘C’mon, hurry! Get the car keys!’
Following orders is easier than thinking. I do what I’m told. A minute later, we are clicking our seatbelts into place. The watchman, who has been apprised of the situation, comes up to my window.
‘Sir, maine aapke number pe call kiya. Woh mera phone bhi nahi utha raha.’1
Well, at least the fellow who has his claws around my phone is equitable. I’d feel a whole lot worse if he were ghosting me but chatting with the watchman. Simran flips open the laptop. She surveys the map. Her finger charts a route to the blue dot.
‘Take a right from the exit.’
I switch on the ignition, exit our building and turn right.
My first phone was a Tata Indicom CDMA handset. My parents had bought it for me when I started University. It was a tiny thing with no SIM card, and when I received calls on it, it would occasionally allow me, when my luck was in and I stood in the right corner, to hear the caller’s voice over the static. But it had one admirable quality. Where almost every other mobile phone in the market glowed green, this phone’s backlight had the tangerine hue of sunset. This distinctive feature was enough to make me like it — and luckily, there wasn’t time for the novelty to wear off. It was stolen within six months.
I knew it was stolen, and not lost, because someone had picked my pocket. The bus route to my University was notorious for ferrying nimble-fingered crooks. I knew these sort of things happened on crowded buses, that wallets were pilfered and phones were nicked, but I never imagined it happening to me — until it did.
By the time I noted the absence and returned to the bus stop, the bus was long gone. To be honest, I was not all that upset. There was hardly anything noteworthy in the phone, except the numbers of my friends. And I remembered most of those anyway. More importantly, it was a cheap device. My parents — a judicious pair, as events had borne out — had chosen not to trust me with an expensive gadget. In fact, you could say they expected me to lose the phone, and I always strived to meet my parents’ expectations. So I was not too put out and felt entitled to demand a replacement.
It was when I lost that one as well, and then the one after that — my third phone, in case you weren’t counting — that I grew a little alarmed.
May 16, 2026. 7:30 PM
I realise, withing minutes, that I would make a fuckall spy. Every spy, Hollywood tells us, must be adept at high-speed car chases. Look at James Bond or Ethan Hunt or Jason Bourne. Did they become such accomplished drivers by hesitating to overtake vehicles from the wrong side? Would you find them waiting at traffic signals, drumming restless fingers on the steering wheel? Never.
But I am crippled by caution. Even in this time of urgency, prudence refuses to let go of me. It is a Saturday evening, and the streets of Bandra are predictably packed. We inch forward. It is agonising, but our quarry is also mired in this congestion. The blue dot is less than a kilometre away. One free stretch of road is all we need.
Simran’s phone rings. It is my number, my phone calling her.
Surprise gives way to relief, and joy. I knew it! I knew the auto driver was a decent chap. Maybe he was disconnecting the earlier calls because he was ferrying passengers. Now that he’s free, he must be calling to know where he should bring the phone. I never err in judging human nature.
Simran answers the call.
‘Hello! Hello!’
‘….’
‘Hello!?’
‘….’
The line drops. She rings back. An automated voice informs us that the person we’re calling is not answering our call.
I utter an oath and turn onto Hill Road. We check the map. I have never doubted the universe’s love for cruel irony, and now it is in evidence once more. The blue dot is stationed next to Bandra Police Station. The good news is that we’re only three hundred metres away. The bad news is that I see a traffic light turning red.
The third time my phone was stolen, I flew off the rails.
I knew as soon as I’d stepped out of the bus that my Nokia 1100 was gone. I had squeezed through a crush of bodies to reach the exit. Someone must have slipped it out of my pocket in the crowd. When you lose multiple phones in quick succession, you begin to understand the workings of the criminal syndicate. I may not have known what they looked like, but I recognised the modus operandi of the gang that worked this bus route. What pissed me off was that even after pinching my two previous phones, these bastards had not been satisfied. Was there no honour among thieves?
Disregarding all thoughts of my University class, I started running. It was ludicrous to think I could chase a bus down on foot, but I wasn’t thinking. I was driven by rage. I would never have caught up if it were not for a traffic jam. By the time I reached it, the bus was beginning to move again, gathering speed. Picking up my own pace, I grasped a handle and jumped onboard.
I planned to glare at the passengers and roar in indignation. If I shouted with enough conviction, perhaps the robbers would panic. But I had not accounted for the shortness of breath that follows a sprint, and my emotional fragility. The accusations I had meant to thunder emerged as weepy squeaks, punctuated by a fair amount of huffing and puffing. This somewhat ruined the impact I was hoping to achieve. Who has my phone, I bleated. The adrenaline had receded and anguish had filled its space. I scanned the bus with watery eyes. Please return my phone. Please!
A few people stared. Some giggled. Nobody responded to my appeal. At the next stop, I got off the bus, defeated, and started walking back towards my University. Three phones, I thought to myself. Who the hell has three phone stolen from him. I’ll be damned if I ever let this happen to me again.
May 16, 2026. 7:45 PM
Rows of tail lights dot the road infront of us. A red net that has us trapped. In the distance, I can see the intersection. The blue dot is somewhere near that crossroad. There is an auto there, with my phone. A column of vehicles snakes down from it to us. We cannot move until the traffic clears. But when the traffic clears the auto will make for the highway, and soon be out of reach. This impasse has continued for many minutes.
I wonder if I am delaying the inevitable. A phone is not just a phone anymore. The repercussions of losing a Tata Indicom or Nokia 1100 did not run as far. What if they unlock my phone? What if they gain access to my mobile banking apps, my UPI? What if they log on to Instagram and post something scandalous? How will the 37 people who see my Instagram stories react?
Simran unbuckles her seatbelt.
‘It’s no use just sitting here. I’ll walk. I can reach him in two minutes.’
She gets out of the car and starts marching up the road. I lose sight of her in the crowd, and just then the cars around me start honking. The distant signal has finally turned green — and I fear it turned too soon. She will not make it in time. For the first time in my life, I want the signal to flip back to red. I want the traffic to slow down. I want the gridlock to continue.
I gain a few metres before the traffic halts again. I spot Simran on the sidewalk and call out to her. She climbs back into the car, still studying the map.
‘He got away. Another minute, and I would have reached him. He is nearing the highway now.’
‘Forget it. Who knows how long we’ll be stuck here. There is no way we can catch him. Might as well wipe the phone.’
‘Are you sure? If we wipe it, we will not be able to track the phone anymore.’
‘Yes. Do it. Before he gets into my accounts.’
‘Okay… I’m sorry this happened to you.’
‘C’est la vie.’
‘Terrible things will happen to that auto rickshaw driver. Thief!’
‘You know, I still don’t believe it was him. He seemed like such a nice man. Maybe it was another passenger who found my phone — someone who needed it more than me.’
‘Sir, I tried calling your number. He is not receiving my calls as well.’
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'someone who needed it more than me' - what a great last line :')