City Life

I was on my way to a mall yesterday when something straight out of a TV public affairs program happened to me.

While crossing a major roadway yesterday, through a pedestrian overpass, I felt a slight pull on my backpack on my right shoulder. I looked around and I saw a man behind me, holding on to one of the zippers of my bag's pocket. The pocket was already slightly open but the contents were still out of one's reach.

I was so surprised I could only say, "What are you doing, you fool!" The man raised his hand, with an innocent look on his face. I gave him a kick on his shin and he fell to the ground.

We stared at each other until he got up and ran away from the scene.

I've seen a report of this in one of those expose on TV. A gang of men and women opening backpacks of unsuspecting pedestrians, taking anything they could get their hands on. But that was in another part of the city, so I was surprised it happened to me.

But what really surprised me was that, it happened to me at 11 in the morning in a very busy pedestrian overpass. While the man was down, some people even passed him by. Nobody looked at him or at me.

It wasn't like that before. Had it happened a few years back, someone would have stopped and asked either me or the man what was happening. It made me think that this is part of a city's transformation. As a city gets big, people become callous and wouldn't want to get involved in situations like that.

Or may be a crime like this is so common, people are not surprised anymore. It was just another incident in their busy city life.