These days due to stormy weather many mangoes fall from the trees on the road and passersby pick them up and go their way. But many undisciplined youngsters rob mangoes from the trees stealthily, at night. Their parents do not check their thieving habit at an early age. A small leak sinks a huge ship. Discipline is inner training and conditioning a person’s mind, heart and body for controlling a person’s behaviour. One has to be disciplined not only in personal matters but also in a society.
Goa is having tales and tales of unending horrors of chain snatching which goes on uninterrupted. The way chain snatchers have grown in our country, shows that Goa, is being looked by these gangsters as centre of the criminal world.
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These chain snatching devil’s agents, it appears, from numerous chain snatching reports, that they require three important conditions. First, the courage of a terrorist to ignore the police, secondly, a partner in crime, on a motorcycle ready to take off at lightning speed, at a given signal; lastly, for the success of their plan a victim ready with a gold-chain invitingly displaying round her neck. If, these three situations are missing, the whole plot burst like a bubble in water.
The ideal victim for chain snatchers is an old woman; but any one will do; anybody’s ‘pori’ with ‘galyat sankli sonyachi’ (girl with a golden necklace around her neck). Both, old or young are easy to handle as it is their ‘dave hatt ka kell’ (it is their left hand’s play).
The perfect stage for a chain snatcher to play his role would be a single individual walking on a lonely road; with a chain, conspicuously nestling round the victim’s neck. The chain taker pulls the chain and runs, as if in a race. Our poor, police cannot catch them; cannot match them. The de-chained victim turns horror-struck; open-mouthed; excited; and by the time she recovers from the shock and trumpets her voice from strength to strength to a crescendo, to publicise the news to a passer-by, the snatcher is a couple of miles away from the scene of action with his assistant on two-wheeler; and with the chain in his hand.
The choice of an individual falls on the side on which the person is accustomed to like the tree falls on the side it is inclined. We only talk about change, but nobody actually believes in practising it. We can discipline and change our youngsters. Old ladies who fear that they might be accosted by a chaining-snatching-thief should wear rolled gold jewelry for self protection against them. I quote here, Mahatma Gandhi’s words: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” We as citizens could bring about these changes by doing these small things.
I remember of an incident of undisciplined stealing mind of a youngster who from petty crimes graduated to be a criminal, even after his marriage, and one day landed in prison. His mother went to meet him at the jail’s gate. He met her there just to say this: “Mother, if you had checked my early habit of stealing mangoes, I would not have landed here in prison. You have destroyed my family life and landed me in this dungeon. ‘Mai ho guneaum tuzo’ (Mother, this is your fault)”.
