Juvenile Juhu Jesters, writes Sajid Khan

What sort of a title is this? Was I a juvenile delinquent? Yes. Am I a Juhu boy? Yes. Do I jest? Yes. And my CA can re-confirm that. 

You see Juhu is exactly like New York. Or San Francisco. Perhaps, Miami. But, a part of it is also like Nigeria. The slums. The very area in which I grew up with most of my friends who were highly classified juvenile delinquents. I am not ashamed of my past, it’s not that I did drugs, drank (teetotaller till this day) or eve teased. But I was a thief.  From the age of 11 to 14. And was part of a five-boy gang of petty thieves. And when I say petty, I mean really petty. Right from mandir ke bahar ke chappal to clothes drying out in the open to biscuit packets to hub cabs. All this and more only to be sold for a few rupees, which I would spend completely on watching movies. Till, one day, we decided to do the big heist.

It was the summer of ‘84 and our gang leader Chetan came up with a brilliant idea which would earn us a couple of hundred rupees each, rather than tens and twenties. For a 13-year-old like me, `300 was a fortune. 

What was the plan? “Aajkal ek nayi gaadi aayi hai, Maruti 800,” he told us.” This guy who stays opposite Juhu beach has bought this car and has put in a new sound system. Plus he has 40-50 audio cassettes kept in the car.

The watchman in his building goes to sleep in the afternoon. If we can quietly sneak into the building at 3 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, there’s no one there. But all this is possible only on a Sunday afternoon.”  

I asked him how was he so sure about all this. He replied, “The owner of the car is my dad’s friend. And he gave me a lift right now. But I didn’t lock the passenger door.” And we said, “Wow!”  You see, at that time, there was no concept of central locking. And since it was a Sunday, we decided to head there that day itself. It was exactly how he told us. The watchman wasn’t there. There was pin-drop silence in the building and the passenger door in the car was open. It wasn’t even stealing, it was like taking candy from a baby.

What we didn’t realise, is that the candy would turn out giving us cavities and the baby turned out to be a midget. Oh God! I am so politically incorrect. So sorry, dwarf, okay? Sorry again. 

Chalo, let’s settle for hobbit. You see there was this guy in our gang who used to just accompany us but never rob anything, but used to get an equal share since he was part of the gang. So that wasn’t fair. So when Chetan, our boss, got into the car, he made it clear to us that rookie kid would get only 10 per cent instead of 20. On hearing this, the rookie kid Shreyas wasn’t too happy. So while Chetan was systematically removing the audio set and cassettes one by one, Shreyas in his greed put his hand through the window to grab four-five cassettes for himself and his elbow squeezed the horn of the car. Little did we realise for such a small car, its horn would be so loud. Out of nowhere, in less than 10 seconds, all the neighbours came and they started screaming ‘Chor chor’ as they saw us in the car. Remember, this is 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and we did not have any hoods on our faces.

We grabbed the merchandise and ran. While running, we realised what padosi power was all about. There were some 20-30 people running behind us on the main road screaming ‘Chor chor!’  Since we did not want them to follow us to our hideout, we screamed to each other, ‘Run towards Juhu beach”. 

Now when we ran on the beach, two of my friends ran towards the left side, me and another friend instantly removed our T-shirts and pants and lay down on the beach next to some foreigners. 

But Shreyas, because of whom this chase began in the first place panicked so badly that he ran into the sea. Picture this: me and my friend are shivering and shit scared lying down next to foreigners and seeing all this mayhem with these people searching for us and watching Shreyas swim into the sea. Believe it or not friends, those people combed the entire beach looking for us and were waiting near the shore for Shreyas to come out. He was in the middle of the sea till 9 o’ clock in the night. In the night, when we met up, we decided never to do this again…..with Shreyas. And as punishment, we gave him one audio cassette of Anup Jalota.

I guess, as I grew up, common sense prevailed and I gave up being a juvenile in real life and made it my profession hosting TV shows (wink). Everything that you read today was absolutely true, but the names were changed to protect the not so innocent. I hope you also realise, just like Juvenile Juhu Jesters, that crime doesn’t pay… unless you are a good criminal. (wink)