Every Tuesday night, on the streets right outside my office,
there is a big market where vendors sell everything from vegetables to clothes
to household appliances to cheap jewelry to fried snacks, etc. It is a local market
for the working-class neighborhood and, even though the quality of much of what
is being sold is fairly low, I’ve often enjoyed wondering through after I get
off from work as the atmosphere borders on the carnival-esque and the
people-watching is sublime.
However, last Tuesday when I left the office the streets
were barren and empty—even more so than on a non-market day. Confused by this
state of affairs, I asked a colleague who lives just a few blocks from the
office if he knew why the market had disbanded.
My colleague said, “Well, word on the street is that at the
market last Tuesday a shopkeeper and a customer got into a fight, which ended
when the shopkeeper threw acid onto the customer. That poor guy is now in
intensive care at the hospital and the shopkeeper fled into hiding. Because the
shopkeeper was a Punjabi Hindu and the customer was Muslim the police were
afraid of sectarian reprisals and so shut the market down. But I’ve heard that
they just found the shopkeeper who is now in police custody. So, everything
should be back to normal now.”
This, my friends, is what we call a TII (“This is India”)
moment. The market is closed for fear of
religious violence following an acid attack? Oh sure, that used to happen in
the neighborhood I grew up in all the time.
Note to self, do not
get into a heated argument with a shopkeeper. Or, anyone who looks like s/he
might be packing acid.
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