There is a condition when forbidden becomes necessary and immoral, immortal. Generally known as teenage, this strange behaviour lasts for a few years and subjects us to things we are bound to recoil with horror later. One of them is shoplifting. From picking candies right under the nose of the counter guy, to nicking safety pins when no one would look, and sometimes even justifying it as the rightful punishment for scrupulous, overcharging shopkeeper, most have gone through that stage and needless to say aren’t very proud of it. But when recently a seemingly affluent older woman, who reportedly owns luxury cars and a guest house in Old Delhi, went five-digit happy, lifting not just items like bags but even cash from the counter, it was once again time to remember Winona Ryder!
CCTVs turn redundant when affluent, posh looking, posh living ladies accidentally slip two of the 20 rings displayed on the counter and conveniently walk away with them on the finger. A reputed jewellery store owner from South Delhi shared with us his dilemma of not being able to do much against the army of shoplifters. “More often than not, it’s the people you don’t suspect who do it. They often come in a group and want to see everything on display. And once the attendant is slightly distracted, conveniently forget to take some item off,” he said, adding that they are helpless once the customer is out.
“We try and make it sound like they accidentally forgot to return it or use humour as a device to make them realise it,” he adds. But not everyone is so forgiving. Divanderji Dashmesh, who owns a designer clothes shop in DLF Mega Mall, Gurgaon, still thinks about the day when a bunch of five well-dressed people nicked eight suit pieces from his store and he only realised it much after they were gone. “We have adopted a very strict attitude towards people who shoplift. I have trained my boys to be extra careful and once we detect mischief, we politely request a search or else call security,” said the store owner.
But the most woefully shocking tale we heard was from the store manager of Miss Sixty in DLF Place Saket. Shweta Chauhan witnessed a lady and her gang in action, when they stole three packets of cash from behind the counter. “Being early evening, we didn’t have many customers and with shifts changing, even the staff was on short supply. Five people, one man, four ladies, all well between the ages of 40 to 50, started browsing the store with clearly no intention to buy. They constantly tried to engage us in conversation in a language which could be Tibetan or Chinese, with the man even talking to the guard,” she said.
“The moment I went to the store to drink water, they acted on cue and within a second, grabbed three bags of cash from the counter and swiftly walked away. It was only when I came back I realised the cash was missing,” she said.
Though falling within the bounds of kleptomania, shoplifting gets slightly waned off from the seriousness, due to the ambiguity involved. One former shoplifter, on the condition of anonymity told us, “It’s the thrill of doing something one isn’t supposed to, the immoral act that everyone asks you not to do and seeing whether you can get away with it.”