The Hindu Business Line : Of mice and men

They poison mice on Ritchie Street. The shops and houses there are huddled so close together that, perhaps, they just cannot afford to give them a second chance. But let’s leave Ritchie Street behind, with just a brief pause to puzzle over why the poisoned mice do not in turn poison the crows which feed on them.

Earlier, living in more spacious surroundings, it was my practice to catch mice rather than kill them. I would release the little fellow the next morning after trekking a few hundred yards into wide open spaces far from human habitation.

From time to time my neighbours did comment on the way I seemed to be catching a mouse every other day. But I knew that it was the same mouse that I kept catching over and over again.

I only began to have doubts about this when one morning, after releasing my mouse, I looked around and found one of my neighbours sheepishly releasing his.

Done with the mice, its time to bring in the men, though, actually, the first time around I was just a child of seven, stepping out on my own for the very first time with a cinema ticket in my pocket. I got into the Mumbai double-decker alright, and made my way to the little square platform near the exit when someone tipped me off that I was almost there. I stood there quietly, waiting for the bus to come to a stop, until, seeing the Regal theatre pass by, I realised that the driver and conductor had forgotten all about me. So, in this typically quiet profile way that I have, I simply stepped off the bus.

I’m a bit hazy on what happened next, except that I kept telling the people carrying me to the hospital that there was a ticket in my pocket which it would be silly to waste.

My next brush with the after-life came when I was clearing out my hostel room in Delhi for the summer holidays. Having blown all my money on a farewell bash, I boarded a crowded DTC bus with my hands cupped together somewhere around my knees, and the books piled on them reaching up till just under my chin.

When the conductor came around asking for my ticket, I told him to help himself from the money in my shirt pocket, which he kindly did. All in all a pretty pleasant trip, the first 400 yards of it; after which, but for the loving hands clutching me by my collar, I would have got centrifuged into orbit when the bus began a high-speed swerve around a traffic island.

I was a bit older the next time around, commuting to Nariman Point each day from my residence in Bandra. The mouse trap was shaped a bit differently this time, which may be the reason I didn’t recognise it. My chappals had given way, and I had taken a fancy to a pair of Kolhapuri slippers I’d seen somewhere. The Kolhapur part of it, with a cute red bit of fluff on it, was cute, but the leather sole proved nearly fatal when I almost slipped under the crowded local train instead of into it.

I could go on and on, but it is best not to tempt the Gods, lest they decide to cut a long story short.