Once my friend and I decided, for sheer fun, to walk from Pune to Mumbai. Equipped with some loaves of bread, boiled eggs, and a thermos flask filled with tea, we set out at 8 o’clock in the morning. We intended to stay overnight at Lonavla. After we had walked twenty miles, we felt tired and our subsequent progress was very slow. We were a long way from Lonavla, when it got dark.
As we were trudging along the deserted road, a policeman appeared from nowhere. He stared at us suspiciously and asked us to explain our presence in that unwanted place. We told him that we had undertaken a walking-tour for a change and some adventure. But he didn’t believe us. “Road robbery is on the increase”, he argued, “and the culprits often disguise themselves as holidaying tramps”.
When we pointed out that we were high- school students, he retorted that several high-school students had been involved in car thefts. I argued at length, referred to my respectable family and invoked my illustrious ancestors, in order to prove that we were not robbers or criminals, but the cop did not seem to be convinced. He took down our names, addresses and other particulars and declared that he was going to arrest us on suspicion.
I was utterly miserable and helpless while my friend began to cry. Just then a lorry happened to be passing by. The policeman, who by now, was convinced that we were respectable young men, stopped the lorry and asked the driver to take us into it and leave us at Mumbai.