Loitering without intent

If I ever make a list of rules for cyclists in Delhi, then ‘Avoid Jat cops’ would be up there among the top three. Indeed, ‘Avoid all cops’ is a good general rule to follow, but the Jat variety is a particularly dangerous species and should be steered cleared of at all costs.

I had the misfortune to run into them at the Delhi-Faridabad highway border a few weeks back. It was a warm Sunday morning and I was out on a ride with my friend Mohit. We had covered some 30 kms and were going back through this less-explored road.

Mohit likes to take pictures of strategic locations and upload them on Google Earth for the benefit of other cyclists who he thinks would be inspired by our pioneering efforts. Unfortunately, this particular border was outside a police station and it was being manned by Jat cops, one of whom happened to spot him. (I shall call him Constable Hitler, though in real life they tend to have innocuous sounding names like Ram Singh.)

Constable Hitler came charging at us. “How dare you shoot me?” he thundered. Mohit calmly explained that he was just shooting pictures of the road and meant no harm. The story sounded very thin to Constable Hitler who was now joined by two of his colleagues who I shall call Constable Mussolini and Constable Franco.

The three constables took turns going through Mohit’s pictures: there was one of the road preceded by one of me posing in front of a dump truck near the border; there were also a few other pictures we took on the way like that of a bare-chested old man who owned the dhaba where we stopped for tea, and some cows curiously nibbling at our parked bicycles. Mohit volunteered to delete the pictures of the road and the one with me in front of the dump truck if they were causing distress.

“What are you doing cycling around these parts?” Constable Hitler asked, losing interest in the pictures and changing tack. “You have long hair,” he said looking at Mohit. “And what’s worse, you have a beard,” he accused me, glaring hard.

“Show me your identities,” demanded Constable Hitler who was now treating us as if we were members of the Laksher-e-Taiba.

Mohit said he usually doesn’t go cycling with his driver’s license and passport but fortunately I was carrying my wallet. I fished out my British Council Library Card with my photograph on it and gave it to Constable Hitler. He took it, turned it over and spent and inordinate amount of time reading the fine print that explained in great detail what to do if the card was lost or stolen.

Constable Mussolini and Constable Franco were beginning to lose interest in the proceedings now that there were no more pictures to see and slowly drifting away. We thought our ordeal was coming to an end but Constable Hitler was just warming up.

“I know you are here to take pictures of ladies,” he said, making a startling accusation. “So I am going to book both of you for loitering without intent,” he continued more bizarrely and hurtled a series of Indian Penal Code sections at us. “A bail will cost you Rs 5000, not that you are guaranteed to get one.”

I wanted to point out many inconsistencies: that the camera did not have any pictures of ‘ladies’ (unless he was referring to the cows); and that if our objective was to shoot ‘ladies’, the last place we would be is outside a highway police station at noon on a Sunday. Besides, if he wanted to book us for loitering without intent it was also illogical to accuse us of such strange intent in the first place. Instead, I kept quiet and let Mohit do all the reasoning.

“Please let us go,” he pleaded, trying to see if Constable Hitler had a soft spot. “We are just out cycling for fun on a holiday. We haven’t done anything.”

“You are unruly elements out to create trouble,” said Constable Hitler, getting nastier by the minute. “Follow me,” he barked and marched us into the police station across the road.

In Haryana, I believe the accepted practise when accosted by cops is to whip out your Blackberry and start making calls to various high-ranking officials. The other recommended method is to take out your AK-47 (which everyone carries around for such eventualities), and start firing in all directions. Since we didn’t know anybody important or have any firearms at our disposal, we were entirely at the mercy of Constable Hitler.

Inside the police station, we saw the Inspector (whom I shall refer to as Inspector Stalin) with a tough-looking chap in plain clothes poring over some files. No doubt they were calculating the number of terrorists who infiltrated the border or perhaps taking stock of the cocaine they seized that week.

Constable Hitler went up to him and proudly presented us as Exhibit A and Exhibit B. “Sir, I caught these two cycling.”

Inspector Stalin stopped everything he was doing, waved away Plainclothes, and looked us up and down. He was not a man who believed in preambles and came straight to the point. “Why are you cycling?” After a short pause he added with a sneer, “Are you practising for the Olympics by any chance?”

“No,” I replied in all earnest, ignoring the sarcasm, “We are not that good.”

“Why are you cycling then?” he repeated.


“For exercise,” I said, thinking of a good one.

“Exercise?” boomed Inspector Stalin, “Why don’t you go to a park and do your exercise?”

What I wanted to say was that I live in a free country and have all the right to cycle wherever and whenever I jolly well want to. What I did, of course, was shut up.

Constable Hitler passed my library card to Inspector Stalin who gave it a cursory glance. Mohit showed him the pictures and tried to convince him that we were recreational cyclists and not terrorists on a reconnaissance trip with plans to blow up the police station. Inspector Stalin was more interested in fiddling with the camera than looking at the pictures or listening to Mohit.

Constable Hitler, sensing that matters were getting out of hand, played his trump card. “Sir,” he said, “I think they are out to shoot pictures of ladies.”

There was a nerve-wracking moment as the Inspector mulled over this. And then, looking at Constable Hitler, he said, “What’s wrong with shooting pictures of ladies? Let them shoot pictures of ladies if they want to.”

Even on this surreal Sunday morning, we were not prepared for such an extraordinary outlook. Nor for that matter was Constable Hitler who was totally deflated and was sulking like a child from whom all his favourite toys have been confiscated.

Inspector Stalin, now thoroughly bored of the whole affair, dismissed us with a brusque wave of his hand. “Go away,” he said.

“But,” he warned us as we proceeded to leave, wagging his finger like a stern principal admonishing a student he caught doodling dirty pictures on the toilet wall, “don’t ever repeat it!”



One of the 'ladies' we were
accused of shooting.

Point and Shoot

About a year back, I got myself a pocket-sized Canon ‘Point and Shoot’ with the intention of recording some of my bicycling trips.

I have no technical knowledge and take the camera nomenclature very seriously: I point. I shoot. Mostly I end up pointing at and shooting my friends Ranjan and Mohit as they happen to be the ones I often go cycling with.

Mohit, being an art director, is at ease with photography and also carries a camera. His method is loosely based on George Bush’s tactics during the invasion of Iraq: Carpet Bombing. He shoots everything in sight and then uploads it on Google Earth.

Ranjan, like typical writers, doesn’t see the point of the whole thing. He’d rather be climbing another 1000 meters instead of being asked to pose in a certain way because the light is falling right just there.

I, on the other hand, unsure about my photography skills, fret over each picture. Since I also don’t know any Photoshop, I spend a long time trying to frame the perfect shot before either saving it for posterity or consigning it to the trash can. This can hold up the cycling for hours and it irks Ranjan no end.

“I have realised we don’t go on bicycling trips any more,” he complained bitterly to us as we reached for our cameras during a break on the way to Lansdowne. “We go on photography trips. The bikes are merely props and I am the model you take along.”

Looking at our cycling pictures is a bit like flipping through marriage albums. It’s the same picture repeated over and over again, with the occasional unknown character or location thrown in. The main difference is that while people usually get married only once, we go on cycling trips every three months or so.

While we combine cycling and photography, I have come to realise that we don’t do either very competently. As Mohit once put it, “We probably shoot as well as Lance Armstrong and cycle as well as Ansel Adams".



Ranjan just hates being photographed.


One of our numerous bike-against-wall shots. This one
is enhanced by the presence of a young man who turned
up to clean our rundown hotel room in Lansdowne.


A local cyclist we met on the way to Ranthambore.


Ranjan refuses to pose, but that never stops me.


Restless Mohit posing for me in Lansdowne.


Ranjan writing his memoirs in a hotel in Ambala where
we stopped on our way to Kasauli. It was one of the
better hotels we stayed in. It had things like a chair
and a light bulb.

Tiger Hunt

An open-topped Mazda, one of the designated government canters allowed inside the Ranthambore forest reserve, arrived at our hotel on schedule at 2pm to pick us up. Our guide, a tall young man named Altaf, was standing inside, holding tight to a railing, his eyes peeled as if he expected a few tigers to emerge from the hotel with us.

Mohit and I got in the front alongside the middle-aged driver who seemed to be a veteran of many such trips. The canter quickly filled up with an assortment of excited young couples and foreign tourists we collected from various luxurious resorts on the way. Some were carrying binoculars and a few even had tele-lenses attached to their digital cameras.

Mohit and I had earlier cycled to Ranthambore from Jaipur and gone up to the beautiful fort inside the reserve. Usually we head straight home after our cycling trips, but this time, since we had time on our hands, we decided to give the safari a try.

The forest area covered around 400 sq km and was divided into five zones. We made our way into Zone Four, where apparently tigers were spotted earlier in the day. We drove slowly through the lush forest, scanning every inch for any movement.

Suddenly our guide screamed for the vehicle to stop. All eyes followed his pointed finger and I saw a couple of rodents disappear into the undergrowth. “Mongooses,” he said reverently. “Not one, but two. According to Rajasthani folk wisdom, seeing a pair of mongooses during the start of a journey is a good omen.”

Cheered by this extraordinary slice of good luck, we continued on our way, the canter groaning as it negotiated dirt tracks, lurching wildly like a drunk on his way home. Once we stopped and took a long look at a deer that was spotted, which our conscientious guide identified as a spotted deer. A few minutes later, we halted and gazed at a few noisy parrots.

After an hour or so, people were tired of taking pictures of birds and they had enough of deer, spotted or otherwise. The possibility that the tigers of Ranthambore were lying low dawned on us, though no one said it aloud.

Good fortune, though, was around the corner. The mongooses, it seemed, were blessing us after all. We met a canter on its way back, filled with beaming people who looked like they had won lotteries. The excited guide of theirs assured us that there were tigers ahead and if we climbed a hill nearby, we too could see them.

Our driver, who was somnolently going through the motions, transformed into a DTC bus driver. We clung on for dear life as the Mazda thundered through the forest, skidding and swerving past trees whose branches grazed our arms. The couples behind us screamed and whooped.

Years ago, the Maharajas rode on elephants hunting tigers with their shotguns. Now, here we were in our 4x4 with our zoom lenses, charging through the forest, adrenaline pumping, on our own tiger hunt.

Soon, we were on top of the hill only to discover that there was quite a traffic jam up there. A half a dozen canters and many jeeps were jostling for space – it seemed all the tourists of Ranthambore were assembled and staring through their binoculars and tele-lenses.

I had expected the tigers to be walking up and down, posing like models on a ramp. I was quickly disillusioned. As we squeezed into a space between two jeeps, I looked across at the valley and examined it closely. To my naked eye, it seemed devoid of any big cats. A man from the nearby jeep informed us that the tigers were in the open earlier but now had gone under the cover of the trees.

A bespectacled young man from our canter claimed to spot one. “I can see it,” he exclaimed. “What does it look like?” asked the man next to him with the binoculars.

“Yellow with black stripes,” replied the wise bespectacled one.

All of us peered intently.

“Look, I can see its tail wagging,” the bespectacled man added.

“I can see it too,” said another man, who looked like a corporate big shot, quietly from under his straw hat.

The man with the binoculars was making no progress. “I can’t see anything. You must have great eyes,” he told Straw Hat.

“God given gift,” muttered Straw Hat modestly.

The man with the binoculars passed the equipment to his excited wife who looked all around with it. “I can’t see it either,” she whined.

All this while our guide was looking very distressed, as he too hadn’t seen anything. Now, with the help of the driver, he spotted it too. “Follow my finger”, he screeched jumping up and down, “Look where I am pointing. It is a tigress. With two cubs! Next to the trees near the cactus shrub.”

I looked hard into the distance. I saw many trees. I saw plenty of cacti. I didn’t see any tigress or cubs. I looked at Mohit who shook his head. “Nothing.”

The wife with the binoculars exclaimed, “I can see a black spot. Is the black spot the tigress?”

“That’s her mouth,” said the guide.

“It’s got deer meat in her mouth,” added the bespectacled one who wanted to be back in the limelight.

“I think it’s spotted deer,” said Straw Hat, not to be outdone.

I still couldn't see anything remotely resembling a tigress.

“The tigress has moved and is now sitting inside the cluster of those tall bushes,” said our guide, who seemed to have suddenly developed X-ray vision. “The cubs are to the left of her.”

“A sitting tiger doesn’t get up easily,” said the driver philosophically and proceeded to chew some pan.

Mohit, who was sneakily taking pictures of people looking at the tigress, now abandoned all stealth and clambered onto the canter’s railings and started shooting them like paparazzi.

“There are hundreds of pictures of tigers on the internet,” he said to me, “but I bet there aren’t any good ones of people looking for tigers. I can sell these to Getty Images.”

As the light started to fade, the canters began turning back. We were the last one to go, reluctantly leaving the tigress and her cubs behind.

The people inside our vehicle convinced themselves that they had seen the tigress and the cubs. The couple with the binoculars thanked God for making it their lucky day. The bespectacled man and Straw Hat argued about the kind of meat it was feeding on.

For Mohit and I, the cycling trip was the high point and though we enjoyed the safari ride through the forest, neither of us saw the endangered cats. Maybe we too would’ve had better stories to tell if we had visited Ranthambore just as tourists.

Cricketing admen

Every year, the advertising fraternity in Delhi religiously turns out for the cricket tournament conducted by the Media Transasia Group.

The preparation starts some two months before the event. The Captain (usually a senior person in the agency who usurps the position by virtue of having represented his school in the seventies) tries to get eleven people to attend the practice sessions, termed, rather ambitiously, The Nets. The only people who turn up are a few canteen boys and the utterly hopeless semi-paralytics who have no chance of being selected in the team. ‘The professionals’ are recklessly confident that they’ll be in their elements during the actual matches.

As the event gets closer, the excitement picks up inside the agency office. There are pre-match conferences and animated talks in the corridors. Strategy meetings are held and tactics worked out on laptops, John Buchanan style.

After all that frenzied build-up, the hardest part for the players is turning up for the matches. They are typically fixed for 8am on Saturdays – a time when the average advertising person, after his Friday night excesses, is in deep slumber.

Indeed, matches have suffered because the tearaway fast bowler from Production was recuperating after checking an artwork or the copywriter, who is also the opening bat, in a fit of rash optimism, decided to celebrate the night before with sixteen tequila shots.

The only thing professional about the whole spectacle is the uniform. Expertly designed in the agency (at the cost of missing many work deadlines), it makes the team look very accomplished and the players trot out as if they have multi-million-dollar sponsorships from Nike. The audience usually consists of one or two girlfriends and the odd stray cow.

There are essentially two types of batsmen. The first is the kind that has played some sort of cricket a few decades back. They are under the impression that they are still in their prime and try to play shots copybook style. This sort also tends to have fancy equipment and a very professional air about them. They inspect the pitch closely, prod the crease expertly and spend an eternity analyzing field placements before taking guard.

These batsmen play from memory forgetting that in the intervening years their reflexes have slowed down and they have added beer bellies to their physiques. They are usually out in the first three balls they face. To their credit, their walks back to the pavilion is every bit as professional. They always have a technical excuse handy for their dismissals: the reverse-swinging ball or the one that kept brutishly low after hitting a crack on the pitch or, sometimes, even the early morning dew.

The second type learned their cricket by watching it on TV and listening to the commentary of Sir Geoffrey Boycott. These batsmen have come to the conclusion that the whole thing is as simple as faking a travel voucher and can’t wait to get going. This is a particularly fascinating lot to observe as cricket on TV and cricket on the field are two entirely different things. There’s nothing more heartrending than seeing a Creative Director trying to imitate a VVS flick through mid-wicket and instead getting the bat entangled between his legs as his stumps go cartwheeling.

The bowlers too come in various shapes and sizes. Or rather, mostly in one particular shape, viz., round, like the ball.

The idea when bowling is to aim for the stumps. This seemingly easy task is not achieved by most advertising cricketers simply because it isn’t easy to roll your arm over and aim across twenty-two yards if the only thing you did all year was sit in conference rooms eating chips, smoking Classic Milds and drinking pots of coffee.

Needless to say most overs are at least 11 balls long and if it wasn’t for the umpires sympathetically putting an end to many a bowler’s misery, the ordeals could well extend over the weekend.

Fielding is an art the advertising cricketer has never bothered perfecting. Catches, especially skiers, are promptly dropped. The technique of keeping one’s eyes on the ball and watching it all the way into the hands is too complex for our adman who has a remarkably short attention span.

Not too many boundaries are stopped either. The knowledge that any contact with the red object or the ground below could result in severe bruises ensures that all bravado is avoided. Some do make a despairing dive or two, but this is only to show-off and is always done after the ball has safely crossed the boundary line. And yet mis-fields and dropped catches are stared at in utter disbelief as if the fielder wasn’t the chain-smoking Account Director entering a cricket field for the first time in nine years, but Jonty Rhodes in his prime.

If you are at work on Monday and overhear the discussions, you could well be under the impression that a cracker of a cricket match had taken place during the weekend. You’ll hear it being analyzed in every nook and cranny – the batsmen waxing eloquent about their cover drives, the bowlers holding forth on their off-cutters and the fielders bragging about their spectacular catches. It’s only when you watch the players totter off to clients meetings, some with pronounced limps, and others, clutching their backs in agony, that you begin to suspect that all was not quite cricket.