Blame it on Steinbeck and Chekhov

Unpredictable are the ways stories find their authors.

Of the many blunders I have committed, two stand out because, together, they almost cost me my sanity.

The first was taking Anton Chekhov’s words seriously. When asked how he got ideas for his short stories, he is believed to have said, “Put your cigarette on this ash-tray and I’ll write a story about it.” I was naïve enough to believe that everything had a story; all one needed was the mind’s eye to find it, read it and reproduce it.

It sounded so simple that, unmindful of the quality of output, I began writing on everything that crossed my imagination. From military life to mosquitoes; from a railway platform in Uttar Pradesh to a cemetery in Sweden; from Champagne to golf and from Trump to China, my pen spared none.

One writes to be read. So, I kept thrusting my posts on friends who, I thought, didn’t mind being inundated by the ink I spilled. As if that was not enough for a peacefully re-attired life, I made the second big blunder of reading John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley in Search of America and believing that I could travel and write in India as freely and easily as he did in America.

With raw inspiration from Steinbeck and Chekhov, and nothing else for a backup, this Don Quixote — you might call me one — decided to conquer the literary world. I was oblivious that my chosen mission would demand the daredevilry of an absolute fool. I resolved to travel to the most crowded parts of Delhi — Chandni Chowk and Sadar Bazaar — in search of the authentic pulse of the old city and write about it.

That spelt my doom.

To begin with, the going was good, or at least I thought so. The writer in me was buoyant with the many stories that stewed in my small head, the scalp of which had not seen a crop in years. As I carried on, I clicked hundreds of pictures, for I believe that each picture is worth a thousand words.

Then disaster struck.

It was a Sunday in June. Most of the main shops in Sadar Bazaar were closed, but the pavements and ledges outside had been taken over by street vendors selling everything from imitation jewellery to bridal dresses, toys to suitcases, polythene bags to gift-wrapping paper — it was an endless list. Rickshaws, hand-pulled carts, motorcycles and honking cars, all vied with pedestrians for whatever road space remained. Skeletons of men carrying loads twice their size reminded me of the skeletal robots performing miraculous feats at a Robotics Exhibition in China.

I shuddered at the sight of electric cables criss-crossing the pathways—a potential fire hazard, I thought. Peepal plants sprouted from cracks in the walls of a dilapidated building. A massive banner displaying the face of a prominent political leader, surrounded by a dozen party workers and proclaiming “Happy Eid-ul-Fitr”, seemed to be the only thing preventing the adjoining wall from crumbling. Older posters still wished people “Happy Holi” and “Happy Diwali”. Several others conveyed birthday greetings to beloved leaders.

There was momentary panic when the vendors suddenly began winding up their wares and closing their shops.

“Committee is coming! Committee is coming!” A boy on the run had energised the street.

The chaos settled as the team of Municipal Committee members—supposedly there to stop the vendors from encroaching on the roads—turned into another by-lane. It was business as usual thereafter.     

The sheer intensity of human activity in that environment reinforced my faith in the 84,000-odd Indian gods.

I ventured further and entered a narrow lane to get a ‘different’ feel. Even at 3 p.m. on that sunny afternoon, it was pretty dark. Hawkers had spread their wares on either side of the narrow passage, making walking past them something like manoeuvring through a minefield. I kept moving, but soon the combination of the asphyxiating smell of an open drain, rotting fruit on the floor, cow dung infested with flies and a lavatory somewhere in the distance began to nauseate me. Further up, the passage was choked with people.

I turned back; I thought I had had enough for the day. In minutes, I would discover how misplaced my assessment was. I hadn’t had enough; there was more to follow.

After clicking the last picture in that lane, I slipped my iPhone into the side pocket of my cargo troussers. I maintain that cargos are ideal for travelling in crowded places, with their box pockets secured by flaps.

Just then, I felt a push on my right flank. I turned around. A boy, in a hurry — he must have been a teenager—was trying to find his way. I gave him a look that said, “Behave yourself.”

Before he could extend the apology, I thought he was trying to convey with his eyes, I was pushed from the left. Another youngster; late teens, perhaps. Then came another push, this time from a third direction. And then, two more.

Those pushes threw me off balance. In the split second that I took to regain my footing; my instinct told me that something was amiss. I felt my pockets — cargo pockets, six of them, secure pockets with flaps — not once, twice, thrice, but many times.

The horse had bolted.

Those five devils! They had taken away my iPhone. In a flash, I realised what else had gone with it. Data apart, my notes and pictures, around which I was weaving stories, were gone—one of my loved worlds had shattered like an Austrian wine glass struck by a Vande Bharat. They had stripped me of my secret pride.

It was an emergency akin to a parachute failure I had experienced years ago. I had seconds to act if I was to get my phone back. Running behind those boys in the dark alley would have been a wild-goose chase. Besides, my ageing knees would have given up the chase sooner rather than later. So, I did the next best thing. I hobbled to the nearest police assistance booth on the main road, introduced myself to the officer on duty and told him that my phone had been snatched.

He sent a police constable with me to ascertain the exact spot where it had happened. To my good fortune, the location was partly covered by a CCTV camera.

Back at the police booth, the cops sifted through the last few minutes of the CCTV footage. Lo and behold, there I was, surrounded by the little devils, signalling to one another and exchanging meaningful glances. Although the actual snatching was not caught on camera, the cops assured me that if those boys had taken my mobile phone, they would get it back.

“We’ll take it out of their belly if they swallow it,” one of them assured me. He identified one of the boys as an old offender.

A constable sent to the boy’s house returned with the information that he had not returned home.

“Please don’t visit our home. Cops visiting us brings disrepute to the family. Arrest the boy if he has committed any crime,” an elderly lady of the house had urged the constable.

“Sir, these people take undue advantage of the laws governing treatment of juvenile delinquency,” the police sergeant apprised me of the difficulty they face dealing with teenaged miscreants.

In the meantime, the smart alecks who had taken my mobile had powered it off. It couldn’t be reached when my number was dialled several times from different mobiles.

“Please rest assured your phone will be recovered.”

Those were the parting words of the police officer when I left Sadar Bazaar that day.

As a first step, on reaching home I blocked my SIM and used my Apple account to declare my phone ‘lost’. This would prevent misuse of my device by anyone. Apple’s Find My option gave the last known location of the device as Sadar Bazaar, where it was snatched.

Thereafter turning on my MacBook and trying to determine the current location of the lost mobile became a mania with me. I tried it several times through the following night, hoping that someone would switch it on and I’d be able to lock its location.    

Thanks to the Telecom Department, along with strict regulations to prevent fraud, there is also the convenience of getting another SIM across the counter. The procedures are simple; and the representatives of the service providers, helpful. I got mine in a jiffy the very next day, when there were still no signs of recovery of my phone.

It was surprisingly difficult to use an old phone that I had discarded years ago. Installation of essential apps, including banking apps, entailed long-drawn processes involving passwords, debit-card details and OTPs. How I went about installing the apps—and the loss of all my messages during the reinstallation of WhatsApp—exposed my technological illiteracy and how poorly organised I was. Many of the lost messages were actionable; they were my commitments which, sadly, I would never even recall, let alone fulfil.

Hassled by the goings-on at my end, I had no time to read, act on, or respond to messages on social media. So, over the following two days, I publicised that I was going on a digital detox and would rejoin in due course. I did this partly because ‘digital detox’ sounded ‘hap’ and partly under the influence of Johann Hari, of Stolen Focus fame. It was my opportunity to stay away from avoidable noise for a while.

It didn’t surprise me a bit when none asked why I was going silent.

It was my conclusion that people are too burdened to bother about another’s life. A genuine soul calling or messaging to enquire about someone’s welfare could be seen as an intrusion or as someone trying to seek a favour.

A break from social media, which ultimately lasted for about a month for different reasons, was a boon. It let me indulge in some of my loved activities and hobbies. A return to calligraphy, sculpturing, caricaturing, serious reading, writing and even walking and cycling was godsent.

Nothing encouraging happened on the second day. The confidence in the police camp dwindled.

“Sir, if your phone is sold while we are trying to trace it, I am afraid it will become impossible to find,” the officer warned.

I discovered that stolen Apple phones are generally not resold for use; they are cannibalised — dismantled, with their parts passed on to repair shops. The outer cases, screens, microphones, speakers and camera lenses fetch decent returns.

I crossed my fingers.

On the third day, Apple’s Find My feature spotted my phone in a residential area near Sangam Vihar. A prominent landmark, Boozer’s Bar, was a block away.

I informed the cops and then, assuming I was smart, drove 30 kilometres to the general area with my dear wife and a team of two tough men — just in case.

When I think of it today, it was a funny sight. The four of us moved stealthily, laptop open, through the locality. It reminded me of an Indian film in which the protagonists, dressed as street singers, with a harmonium dangling from the hero’s neck, go around singing to find a kidnapped child.

Our search that day ended in a fiasco when the batteries of our devices drained and we realised that the location we were chasing was two days old. Once in the vicinity, Google Maps went bonkers. After a three-hour adventure, we, the self-styled sleuths, returned home empty-handed.

The probability of finding the phone receded with each passing day. It dipped to almost zero, and my heart sank when on a following day, Find My spotted the phone at a location in Gaffar Market, notorious for sale of stolen gadgets.

On impulse, I thought, I would pose as a buyer of an old iPhone 15 Pro and look for my phone. In my heart of hearts, I was prepared to buy my own phone. My primary aim was not saving money, but recovering my valuable data.

I gave up that ‘brilliant’ idea when I realised that the Gaffar Market location was also two days old. With the villains switching the phone on and off as they pleased, and scooting all the time, it would be impossible to catch up with them in the normal course.      

Initially, I did not lodge an FIR because if the stolen device were recovered after filing one, I would have to get it through the court—a long bureaucratic hassle. On the third day, I lodged an eFIR reluctantly to stake my claim on the mobile if it were to be found at a later date.

I lumped every torture as a necessary evil and kept going. After four days, I even stopped nagging the cops but continued staring at Find My on my computer screen.

All along, sanity kept eroding. Yoga didn’t help regain peace of mind, but staying away from social media and pursuing hobbies did.

More than a week later, I spotted the device at a location in Sadar. When I called the cops, I was told that they had recovered the phone. I identified it by its ‘night blue’ colour. To avoid the circuitous procedure of getting it back through the court, I withdrew the eFIR. I thanked the cops profoundly and didn’t pester them to tell me how they had recovered it.

When it was handed over to me, I switched it on and tried to ‘open’ it using Wi-Fi. In my excitement, I skipped some steps and lost all the unsaved data on the device.

Recovery of the phone turned out to be a Gift of the Magi for me.

Aware of the futility of pursuing a case against the juvenile delinquents, I didn’t pursue the matter. I was too exhausted to do so. Besides, in some corner of my heart, I had developed a kind of admiration for their skill and teamwork.

I had sympathy for them, for we as a society, had failed to channelise their energies.

It certainly was not a case of Stockholm Syndrome.

In the following three weeks, I lost my remaining sanity trying to re-activate the eSIM in my phone. The police had done their job; the Telecom Department had unblocked the IMEI, but in the records of the service provider it was still BLOCKED.

Out-of-the-way assistance of a buddy, Major General Lav Chand, and an Airtel associate helped remove the glitch and finally ended my ordeal.

It all started with me wanting to look for stories and write them. Instead, I ended up being one.

I blame Steinbeck and Chekhov for it.