You can see a woman most of the mornings in many of the central city’s ready breakfast places. She is old and ugly, with a mane of white hair, which give her a menacing look she pretended to be stupid but if you look closely into her face, there is a hint of some controlled intelligent mischief look as if trying to put people off by paying attention to her.
She is surrounded by numerous plastic bags into which she keeps her belongings. She normally spreads those around her and always rummaging through trying to find a particular item of interest to her. It seems the item usually hide itself and plays hide and seek with the lady concerned. She starts rummaging through each bag in return and when the item is not found, the search is started all over gain and the missing item usually turned up into one of the bags already searched.
During her youth she tried her hand at various menial tasks working for others but she easily got bored with the routines and could never stick to regular jobs. She was forced to do something useful by her parents to earn her living as her aging parents advised her as not to depend on them for financial support forever. She thought about it and decided to go to the category of ‘self employed’.
Her idea of self-employment being shop- lifting and other such sundry employments where she had to use all her instincts and wits to out- manoeuvre other people. Her first priority being that she needed new clothes as the one she was wearing was going into tatters. She entered a big departmental store and was enchanted by all the beautiful clothes around her and telling her to try it on. She soon picked up a beautiful dress and went to the changing room to try it on.
She discarded her old ones and put on the new dress and the mirror smiled at her.
‘You look beautiful.’ it said
‘I fully agree with you.’ she chimed in
She was getting attached to that wicked beautiful dress and did not want to take it off. It was hugging gently and ushering her in some remote regions of luxury and sensuality. She won’t take it off and defend her right to wear it whatever anyone say. She put on her old dress over it and made sure everything was covered underneath it.
There was long queue at the paying counter and soon she was distracted by commotion and noise beside her. The store detectives have caught someone stealing some pricey goods and the woman in question was screaming and shouting in the grips of a strong man who was dragging her into a room for examination. Here was a chance for her to escape and escaped she did, even without being discovered.
That night she slept the most peaceful sleep of her life. She wore that dress in the bed and all the soft caresses of its folds was sending her into a luxurious sleep of heavens.
Encouraged by her first success, she began to plan further raids on the shops selling expansive items. For the time being she concentrated on non-bulky expansive female item easily portable and each time she had to raid a different store or change her manoeuvres of operation. She often walked into stores, steal some expansive item and then pick up a trivial item such as box of chocolates and pay for it at the counter. She put up an amiable innocent face and the shop assistants were hoodwinked in considering her an honest buyer. It worked most of the times.
In order to diversify her talent, she moved into the masculine territory and employed a man famous for his pickpocket skills. She would dress in all her sumptuous clothes and stand on the street corner of a not very busy street and when he saw tourist cum stranger, she would flash a smile and wiggle her body to distract the man and when his attention were fully diverted, her pick pocket man would come behind the stranger and trip him over. As the stranger was falling, he would run to grab hold and apologize to him profusely for his mistake. In the meantime he would clean his pockets of all their contents.
Sometime he would come near the stranger and try to brush away any dirt from his clothes and in the process cream away the rest of contents. The victim under that impact of double whammy had to no chance of keeping his wits about or escaping. In this way the duo could easily rob a dozen people each day. At the end of the day, they divided their loots among themselves. Her partner being from Latin America was glad to be chaperoned by an English lady who knew the laws of the country.
The partnership lasted for few years but the latin man had to go back to his country and she too was getting too old for the energetic game of shoplifting and pick pocketing. She had to change her tactics and venture into some new territory.
She gathered a bunch of good-looking schoolgirls who could work for her on and off for few hours a day. The girls were eager to get their hands on extra money and never told about it to their parents. They either skived off from the school or put some hours of ‘work’ after school closure and their parents that they were going to get together for doing their homework or revise their subjects for the examination.
She would let them loose in the red light district of the city and when she spotted a vulnerable man; she would give them a sign to grab the stranger.
‘You beautiful man, I want to kiss you.’ On of the girl would put all her charm into it.
Under the impact of her warm embrace, the man would become disoriented and could not defend himself.
She would tighten her grip and other girl will rush in, pushing the man on to the ground robbing him of all his valuables.
Usually the victim was so embarrassed to go to the police or ask for help for ‘being robbed by troupe of school girls.’
Once or twice a victim threatened to go to the authorities but the girls put one over him and stole all his clothes. He would never go to the authorities in his naked state.
*
Those were the days of her adventures and working life but now she was too old and had retired and left her role of ‘Mrs.Fagan.’ A group of younger thieves gave her a room to stay and treated her as a respected ‘God Mother. To keep up her old habits she would spend the day in eating places, squares and parks of the city watching humanity go around.

Durlabh Singh © 2009.