Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Drunken communal thug at Grant Road station

Here's something you thankfully don't see every day in Bombay.

I am waiting for a train at 3:00 pm at Grant Road station on what is a warm and peaceful January day. Since it's not even close to rush hour, there are just a few people on the platform. One of them in a Muslim man in his 60s, sitting peacefully and reading a paper as he waits for the train.

Out of nowhere comes a drunken man in his 50s swinging a plastic scale (ruler) wildy and using the worst Hindi words imaginable! I remind you that it's 3 in the afternoon. He then approaches the Muslim man and starts screaming, "Pakistani, why are you here!!!" The others who witnessed the fracas chose to ignore it, but as far as I was concerned... that sorry SOB had crossed a line.

I snatched that ruler from him and threatened to call the railway police. Then some others also intervened and moved that man away. All the while, he was screaming and cursing. The Muslim man thanked me for standing up for him. I told him that in a decent society there was no room for that kind of behaviour.

I can imagine something like this happening in the Moscow metro at 11:30 pm, but here in Bombay in the afternoon?

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