My evening walk on Sunday turned nightmarish when a ‘gentleman’ outside his bungalow was seen mercilessly thrashing a man half his size. I asked what had provoked him and was told, ‘He is a thief who walked into my house to steal’. I responded by saying the police should be called; there were enough eyewitnesses to this by now but all remained quiet.
Something wasn’t right – with so many people inside and outside his house at 630pm, no thief would have the nerve to walk into a bungalow. I was still being neutral and insisted the beating should stop and the police be called. Instead, to my horror, this man was now dragged back into the driveway of the house, the gate locked, and the beating continued. In a few minutes I reached Mr. Thakur (security). The beaten man by now had managed to come out of the house, stopped where I was, and cried like a baby in pain and with the humiliation he had suffered. I encouraged him to call his employer ‘Blinkit’ the delivery company, and lodge a complaint about the abuse he had just endured.
In the presence of Mr. Thakur, he told us what had transpired. He had visited the house for a delivery, the house-help instructed him to visit the 1st floor where the tenant who had placed the order, resided. In hindsight, this was a breach of security. The owner of the house, this ‘gentleman’, assumed he was a thief and beat him up. The tenant remained a mute spectator to all of this.
Later, this gentleman also verbally abused me many times in the presence of Mr. Thakur and others who had gathered. This didn’t deter but emboldened me further. He eventually walked away. By now a sense of solidarity had developed among the delivery man and some other house-helpers who had gathered, all sharing their personal stories of how the rich wield power over the most oppressed, which I overheard. The chasm between the haves and the have-nots couldn’t be wider. What have we become. I thought.
