By now every blogger worth his salt would have written about the despicable Mangalore pub incident. I have no intentions of joining the bandwagon. What I shall blog about, is an incident that occured around three years back.
Kalwa station is surrounded by slums on the eastern side. Me and a female friend of mine bought cigarettes from a paan-shop nearby and were happily smoking. In a couple of minutes, a few youngsters walked towards us and asked in a high-handed tone, "Idhar kya kar rahe ho?" Before we could reply, a middle-aged woman came and turning towards my friend asked, "Yeh kya kar rahi tu?" Our obvious "Cigarette pi rahe hain" reply seemed to have got their goats. The woman then proceeded to shout at us about how my friend was spoiling the people around her by smoking. One of her statements is still stuck in my mind, "Tujhe dekh ke bachhe bhi cigarette piyenge." With me in no mood to relent, the argument seemed all set to turn nasty. Sensing my anger, my friend threw away her cigarette in disgust and suggested that we walk away. And thats what we did.
