Chain Snatching Scare

Mock drill: Who keeps these bangles?

Chain snatchers are on the prowl again. With monsoon setting in and fewer people on the streets these days, unaccompanied ladies on their morning walk are feeling particularly vulnerable. To raise their nervousness, they are being stopped by beat cops on deserted stretches and warned not to wear/ display gold ornaments on their person.
“This morning one policeman shouted at me from a jeep while I was making my way to the Garden,” narrated Ruksana Khan, one of the regulars for our exercises. “At first I did not understand. He ordered me to hide all the gold I was wearing. I told him they were fake. But he did not listen. Quickly I removed them into my purse and came running to the Garden.”
“Arrey baba, a tall hatta-katta plainclothes man accosted me the other day,” chipped in Nafisa Sayyad. “He also told me to remove all my gold ornaments and hide them. I said I had no gold on me, which is a fact. I don’t wear gold. But he did not believe me.

Nafisa Sayyad

His appearance was so fearsome that I did not argue any further and came straight to the Garden. These days you never say who is a genuine cop and who could be a fake."
Her style of narrating triggered a volley of guffaws, the ladies obviously drawing comfort from not wearing gold as a precautionary measure. The only exception was Qadeer Bano who had a set of gold bangles, a lovely gold chain and huge, gold earrings. Everybody warned her that she was putting her life in peril, but the lady was nonchalant: “If the robbers have to take them, let them, what can I do?”
Promptly Razia Khan grabbed her wrist and pulled out four bangles. “Give them to me,” she demanded. “You don’t have to give them to the robbers.” But before she could put the bangles on, Bhaswati Bose leapt in and tried to wrench them from her. “I want those bangles,” she insisted. The ensuing tug-of-war became an amusing mock drill of resisting a robbery bid, while other ladies standing by wistfully asked Qadeer if she would also part with her gold chain so easily.
“Chain maybe, but not these ear rings,” she declared, obviously a little wiser now.