Bandits!!

Xth.. The year of the Board Exams.Well,atleast the first one. The first times are always hard ,as the rule goes. As if the burdening fear was not enough the constant pep-talks at home and school were spine chilling experiences and which i heard with face aghast. The catch was that i needed an 80% aggregate if i wish to make it back to Loyola School for my XIIth(now that was a pretty cruel rule that was long due to be scratched off,but there it was).So as you can guess the odds were pretty up against me and truth be told i didn't think i could make it.

'TUTIONS' thus became the life line. I had to rely on it to get my ass past the board exams and even harder,do it with an 80% aggregate. Parents were eager to fix up tutions all around the city for all the subjects i had. After much wrangling i brought it down to 2(maths and physics).

I thought myself pretty lucky since i had my class mates who had tutions for mundane subjects like History and Geography. As if putting up with the types of soils or how the wind blows in a Scandinavian country in Geography or the History books that had the blood curdling and gory wars told about in the most monotonous and 'as-a-matter-of-fact' way was not enough.How those poor fellows put up with more hours of that terrible crap i never know!

Well,there i was sitting not so bad with the tutions, life was dragging on..

Coming to the crux of story,these tutions were mostly arranged after class. We usually had our last hour off at school and it was well spent in an engaging match of football which often led to ugly fights. Nevertheless it was indeed a pretty sight to watch a gang of boys all sweating and dirty with bags flung over their shoulders trudging along the road.Only thing was that,we did much more than just walking!

We usually stopped at these shops on the way to refresh ourselves and get ourselves a drink and something to bite.Boys will be boys and so we did our fair share to be true to that rule.

Shoplifting!!

The innocent teens that we were(that's a pretty lame statement but note the irony) we found it pretty amusing to sneak out stuff from these shops when the guy at the shop had his back turned towards us.

The strategy was quite simple and amateurish.













STEP 1: Pick out a big and spacious shop.This was done since smaller shops had shopkeepers perched over the counter like a hunting vulture watching our every move which made the job tough(we wished to believe that we were righteous in a way since we looted the big and rich and leaving the smaller ones free or something).

STEP 2: We always 'attacked' a shop as a gang and would highly recommend so.

STEP 3: Two or three fellows would engage the shopkeeper by inquiring about the prices or buying something for namesake. Three others would be standing right behind staring around doing nothing in particular so as to veil off the ones behind.

STEP 4: Once this was done the fellows at the rear would empty down the LAYS packets,soft drinks or anything they could lay their hands upon, into their bags .

STEP 5: This being done we would vanish hastily to enjoy our loot elsewhere.

This was the 'modus operandi' and i must admit we were quite successful too. That we didn't frequent the same shop more than once a week went well down with the whole looting thing. Now,that i think of those incidents, i cant but proudly recollect how reckless and wild we were. We went on without being caught and i think that's what made us even more ruthless until that day.

We were as usual walking down the street to our tution classes all tired yet checking out a possible target to stage our 'act'. There weren't much shops open and tired that we were went into the first bakery that we saw. The plans as always was executed to perfection and we soon had our bags stuffed with the necessary merchandise. This being done,we proceeded to move out of the store after paying for the things we had consumed(read visibly) but it was not to be.

The shop keeper stopped us abruptly and asked us to pay for an extra packet of sweets. We stood there sporting an innocent puzzled look which was treasured for such precarious occasions. The shop keeper was not fooled. He grabbed the bag from one of us and took out the packet of sweets dramatically and held it aloft for the rest of customer's to see. We stood there flabbergasted and humiliated, heads hanging down and staring at our dirty shoes. Little did we know that more were yet to come.

"You have to pay for the packet of sweets "

DAMN! This was real trouble.The jerk was making use of our pathetic situation and earning his bucks,but we couldn't complain could we.We pulled out all the money we had and and was counting it feverishly,but it was still not enough! We were a good 40 Rs short of the price and we had to no clue about whats to be done.

It was then lady luck appeared in the form of a kind young lady,to prise us out of the situation. She paid the price and what more,let us have the packet of sweets too(BLIMEY!!).She was in her late thirties i guess and had a kind little face. The shopkeeper stared at us with an evil grin and nonchalantly accepted the money from her(the prick).We stood there flummoxed and stammering out words of gratitude. She waved off our apologies with a big smile and advised us not to do such a thing again and walked away. I never saw her again!

We walked back to our class with heavy hearts and all disappointed! I don't think anyone of us listened to what teacher taught that day and were lost in our thoughts.It was a setback! Once the guilt died down we racked our brains to find what gave us away at the shop to no avail.

I will never know what went wrong that day and how we got caught but i will always remember that smiling lady and her deed that saved our ass. We never went shoplifting again.

P.s: The stunts above were performed by experts and should not be tried out elsewhere by any reader. The author will bear no responsibility for the consequence!