An apparantly homeless, possibly
mentally ill, middle aged man walks into one of the chain cafe
outlets that are all the rage with a certain section of the young and
hip, and the older but cooler crowd. He walks straight back into the
little atrium area where the smokers like to hang out. He looks
around, and plonks himself on a chair at one of the tables, an
occupied one.
The change in atmosphere was electric.
The change from light, fun adda to massive discomfort and distrust
was so sudden it was like the physical slam of a huge wave bashing into us. A thick, viscous wall of all the nasty possibilities, of
instinctive cringeing, caused the worst case of “chhondo poton” i
have seen in a long, long time.
He sat next to me, at the table behind
me, and leaned over to ask for a light. I am ashamed to say i felt
the creeping discomfort too as i handed him the box of matches off our table to
light his biri. Conversations, taking place at each table and across
tables; vivacious and effervescent, had come to a grinding halt by
now. The odd word muttered under the breath, and a lot of looking at
each other and at the man was going on.
An employee of the cafe walked out to
the atrium area, and i shook myself ready. With all the recent cases
doing the rounds on facebook of poorer or homeless people being
mistreated by employees of various establishments, i had no cause to
expect anything else from this one too. My friend and i exchanged
glances, and stiffened our spines to intervene if things went too
far or if the employee got obnoxious.
He started with asking the man “what
are you here for? Have you come here to smoke?” Something he would
never ask any of us, regulars, dressed a certain way, appearing to be
from a certain class,even if we had sat there for hours without
placing a single order, as my friend P pointed out later. And yet, a couple of minutes into this man's appearence, and here he was. The man
replied he was going to order some coffee, at which the employee
asked another employee (who had come out in the meantime to offer moral
support or something) to get the man a menu card. The promptness of
service in the arrival of the menu card to the table would have
impressed the most jaded of customers. Luckily, i didnt need to
intervene, and the employees went back to the counter, presumably to
give the man time to figure out what he wanted.
There were four tables in the outdoor
area, two occupied by pairs of people (including ours), one had a
young woman sitting alone and one, the one behind me with a young man
sitting alone. Mr X (as i shall call him for easier referral) had
looked around when he first arrived and sat down with the
unaccompanied young man rather than the woman which i thought was
rather good of him, and unusual in this country. Plenty of men i know
or have had the misfortune to run into would take the situation as an
excuse to inflict themselves on the solo woman, and then use that as
an excuse to strike up a not- so-wanted conversation or try to
instigate unwanted “friendliness”.
The palpable discomfort and mistrust of
the other customers (myself included in the discomfort i am ashamed
to say) continued, peaking in the young man sitting at that table
getting up and walking across the atrium area to join the solo woman
at her table rather than share a table with Mr X. While we were all
fidgeting, hemming and hawing, and quite unable to relax and enjoy
ourselves solely because a particular person is sitting in the same
space, Mr X asked me if i would share my coffee with him, “i dont
have any money for these coffees, you see”. Given that these
coffees start ar 100 rupees, that is quite understandable. I had a
couple of inches left in the bottom of my glass of black iced coffee
which i told him he was welcome to if he didnt mind the taste (no
milk no sugar is not a very Indian way of drinking coffee). He was
fine with it, i handed him my glass.
Thinking about wanting to buy him a
coffee of his own, i had almost made up my mind to get up, tell him i
was going to get him a coffee, and go order, when Mr X said “must
go and meet xyz today! Oh! I had forgotten! He'll leave soon!” to
general space, and got up to leave. As he passed the solo wioman's
table (she was inside at the counter at this point) he reached over
to stub out his biri in the ash-tray. The young man who was at that
table, having shifted there to avoid Mr X, lunged across the table as
the man reached out to SAVE a pack of cigarettes lying on the woman's
side of the table, presumably her property.
Mr X simply smiled, said “i wasn't
going to take those” and left. The whole thing must have lasted
hardly 10 minutes.
The atmosphere changed palpably again
instantly. As if the lightness came back, but with a darker edge.
Everyone started discussing Mr X. The table next to ours was occupied
by a female friend of ours and a man of her acquaintance who we had
met there, at the cafe, a couple of hours before, and had the sort of
conversation with that you tend to have with strangers in cafes. We
spoke of books and music and movies and such. This man now began to
talk about how he hated random people just talking to him, and how he
was not normally a violent person but “today” he wanted to be
violent to Mr X. They left pretty soon after, too shaken i presume to
reclaim the jolly night they were having before this rude
interruption.
The young man of the chaged tables
shoved his oar in a couple of times to the conversation the three
remaining women, (me, P, and solo woman) spontaneously started
having. Getting not much response, and feeling some disapproval (i
personally felt really weirded out by his move of tables), he left
too. The three of us talked for a while about how we were thinking of
intervening if the employees had misbehaved (all three of us), how we
were thinking of buying him a coffee (me and solo woman), how all of
us found young man's action extreme (turns out he was the one who
summoned the employees to “deal with” the man. He told solo woman
he was a counsellor! And claimed that he could tell at a glance that
the man was not a “druggie” but simly mentally ill! And then
proceeded to inflict himself on her despite her very apparent
discomfort with the conversation – which i could see from across
the atrium – and tried to get very friendly), and how we felt about
everyone's reactions, including our own.
After all, he hadn't done anything the
slightest bit out of line. He hadn't misbehaved. In fact he had been
more polite and well behaved than a lot of people we deal with on a
daily basis. We are all self identified libertarians, liberals,
often with a leaning to the left, involved in or in favour of activism
and all of that. So, not surprisingly, it was a blow to our self
images to see our own reactions, and we could not get away from a
feeling of guilt and ashamed-ness.
What was it about a mild mannered,
decent acting, middle aged man that rubbed us all the wrong way so
quickly and so violently? Just because he looked scruffy and
unwashed? Just because he looked down and out? Just because he didnt
dress the way we are used to seeing people there dress? (not true
since he was in pretty standard clothing, jeans, a t-shirt) What was
it about the arrival of this one man that had such an effect on a
whole bunch of people? What caused that knee-jerk, almost
instinctive, conditioned, instant discomfort?
And --- at the end of
the day --- what does that say about me?
