Pickpockets, Crowds, and Parades

I’ve always thought that if someone were to attempt to pickpocket me and swipe my keys or my wallet, that I’d immediately know. Therein would lie the perfect opportunity to seize a perpetrator and call for immediate justification, possibly with a swift back-fist. Thievery does not go lightly in my book, which I can say with some certainty was the same for many merchants back in the day, responsible for the gruesome severing of thousands of hands. I’ve lost a few precious items over time, a two-year old iPod to name one, though my carelessness in misplacing them were not always absent. Regardless, an item left unattended in a kitchen for no less than twenty-four hours, with a name engraved in its coating with a laser, doesn’t just disappear by accident. Some indecent swine clearly found it, and decided to keep what was wrongfully not his. You can imagine what I wanted to do to his (or even her) face if I encountered the person with it, that is, assuming my name hadn’t been completely scratched off by then.

That was roughly two years ago, and it’s October now, the month of Dasara festivities in Mysore.

I realize now that Halloween has come and gone. I didn’t notice.

This past weekend, an annual festival took place in Mysore that drew in thousands of Indians from all over, flooding even the most barren of streets in town, leaving traffic a wretched nightmare for most. Tourists were a common sight during this time, despite this location being one of the country’s less popular stops for tourists, backpackers, and international businessmen. On the day of the great parade, complete with dancing swordsmen, women dressed in colorful, cultural garb, decorated elephants, and moving booths, (imagine Prince Ali making his way through Agrabah on a less magical scale), five friends and I ventured into the heart of the crowds to see all the commotion.

Emerging from the Park Lane Hotel where we feasted on extremely satisfying cheese mushroom omelettes, garlic chicken, pancakes with honey, and banana splits, we strolled our fat bellies down the road towards the parade. To our left was a slight opening in a stone fence that bordered a large park, and I say slight because the fifty Indians jamming their way through that gate in two differing directions sure made it seem “slight. Our curiosity took over so we joined the swarming mass of people, essentially squeezing our way into the park, like when you wring a tube for that last ounce of toothpaste. Once inside, I laid my eyes upon one of the biggest crowds of people I had seen, let alone Indians. To my left and my right, and even above us, we saw Indians mulling about. Indians in the trees, as many as four or five sharing a thick branch, with the grander trees holding as many as twelve (it’s really nothing, considering that families of five will share one motorcycle, or a party of seven will pile themselves into a rickshaw). They were perched up there, waiting for the parade to start, lucky enough to secure a good view over all the thousands of heads. They had climbed anything and everything: telephone poles, park ornaments, hills, RV’s, and buildings. We stuck out like sore thumbs, except we had our thumbs hooked in our pockets, very much aware that the environment we were in was prime pickin’s for those pickpockets.

No available trees were left. Our attempt to climb one grassy overhang was cut short when the dudes up on top yelled at us. We needed a better view.

We left the park area, made our way around it, and saw a horde of what seemed like mostly men, around and on top of a series of RV’s that appeared to be close to the action. We headed straight towards it, and excitedly (perhaps illogically), dove right in.

Now I’ve never been in a mosh pit, but I’m pretty sure what I went through would have to at least go neck-and-neck (pun intended) with a mosh pit experience, considering the sheer amount of bodies and heat I had to deal with. Unfortunately, and I mean reeeally unfortunately, it was like enduring a cacophony of gibberish and shouting while smelling some of the worst BO on this side of the earth. Shoulder to shoulder, progress was made, as some of us literally had to bowl through the more scrawnier guys to inch forward. It may have been completely ridiculous, but my testosterone levels were flowing and I was having a blast. It felt like I was in a riot.

The thing was, fifty feet ahead, it practically was. Guards decked out in uniforms with some pretty menacing-looking sticks were whacking Indians on the head who got too close, and feinting head blows to the rest. Since there wasn’t a barricade setup to keep the on-lookers at bay from the wide street where the parade was about to begin, it was all the guards could do to threaten with physical violence. When I looked down, I would see a sandal here and a slipper there, lost amidst the constant shoving and commotion. It was about this time when my Russian buddy, who is built like a mini-wrestler, thought it would be fun to move our region of the tightly packed crowd in one direction. To prevent from collapsing like bowling pins, hands and shirts were grabbed as we tried out best to maintain our center of gravity. Over the yelling heads, I could see him laughing. I thought it was pretty funny too-

What the f*ck… My right hand instinctively pounced on my jeans’ front right pocket, where I just managed to grasp my wallet in the nick of time. There was a lot going on, but somewhere in the back of my mind I was able to react instinctively after it clicked that my wallet went from deep-in-pocket to hanging-out-halfway. I mean, just about every part of my body from neck down was pressed up against someone, it was a miracle I was able to sense it.

Two seconds later, I whirled around, regaining my balance, and grabbed the first Indian guy I saw by the shirt with two balled fists. I began shouting expletives, telling him to never ever try that again. I was so angry it didn’t really occur to me that I may have had the wrong guy, although I was fairly certain I was right. All I know is, I was exchanging the evil eye with this and the Indian next to him, both whom clearly recognized the choice of words I had just used, and were getting really angry. Yeah well, so was I. Unfortunately, I didn’t actually catch the guy with wallet-in-hand, so there wasn’t much more that I could do other than yell in his face. No one threw a punch, and the situation didn’t escalate much further.

Or shall I say, this situation didn’t escalate much further. Turns out, twenty feet away, wedged between several RVs, a fight was breaking out. I instantly edged my way in for a closer look, along with a couple of the other guys. Another pickpocket was caught attempting to steal a wallet and/or an expensive-looking cell-phone from a pretty burly Indian man, who was holding the skinny pickpocket by the arm in a very tight grip. The thief was bleeding a bit from the mouth, and sweating more profusely than the rest of us in the mid-day heat, and for good reason. Associates of the cell-phone owner were taking turns smacking the guy in the head, yelling in their native language, and occasionally throwing a full-fledged punch to his jaw.

The pickpocket did everything from stand there taking his beating, to pleading his apologies and begging for mercy, to making half-assed attempts to escape. By this time, I was pretty much right next to the ring of men, fixated by what I was seeing. At this time I was thinking, “this is obviously not my fight, I dare not get involved.” One particular Indian fellow obviously did not heed my line of logic at all, for he clearly wandered over minutes after the altercation started, and proceeded to whack the pickpocket on the head every minute or so. Hard. We stood, disgusted at his actions, but we really couldn’t do much. One of us made a feeble attempt to help the pickpocket out of the crowd but we were completely surrounded by RV’s or people, it was not an open area. When I heard my name firmly called I snapped out of my gaze, signaling it was time to go.

However, fifteen minutes later, with two out of the original six group members, I ventured back into the crowd for one last run. This time, there were no fights. Just a short-lived front-row glimpse of the parade, thanks to a lot of fun pushing and shoving (what a workout!).