The outsider
This blog is about making Mumbai your home. For an outsider like me, who came to Mumbai recently, this blog is a DIY and a self help forum rolled into one. Here you will find interviews, stories and profiles of people who, like me, have made Mumbai their home. Every now and then there will also be random provocative ranting about the city --- the kind that goes with blogs and invites evil from all directions. Hope to see you here more often. Rave on!
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Dear Reader,
Mumbai needs a pied piper. Its youth is in a crisis. Recently, the findings of a study conducted by the psychiatry department at the KEM hospital in Mumbai were reported. Interviewing nearly 100 youngsters booked in the Juhu rave party case almost a year ago, the study concluded that the youngsters think smoking marijuana is safe and there is no real harm in doing drugs.
I don't know whether smoking weed causes psychosis or not, but I know for sure that busting a rave and arresting youngsters and then subjecting them to psychological surveys that support a certain political agenda is a dangerous practice that needs be questioned and mocked.
For anyone vaguely familiar with popular drug culture, the busting of a rave party by the police has become such a common and oft repeated joke that it's no longer funny.
It's a joke because there is nothing that a rave bust does to credibly curb either the trade in narcotics or bring down the rapid adoption of a drug lifestyle by a section of the younger people.
Everyday more and more young people are buying weed across the city. More and more youngsters are popping the pills and hoping to create a music album while tripping on LSD. They watch films that don't exactly highlight the side effects of doing drugs unless it's 'Requiem for a Dream' which in my opinion is more about America than about drugs.
Shops openly sell T-shirts that promote marijuana usage and it's not difficult to imagine someone somewhere trying very hard to roll their first joint.
The joke's no longer funny because the police's modus operandi has become extremely repetitive even by police standards.
Since the narcotics control bureau's Delhi office busted a rave party in 2003 at a farmhouse on the outskirts of the capital, the algorithm for a successful bust was repeated by the Pune police in 2006 and respectfully adhered to by the Mumbai Police last year when they busted a rave at a nightclub in Juhu.
One more rave bust anywhere in the country and the following will become part of the police-training manual.
Rave bust algorithm
Step one: Find out where the next rave is happening. If your regular intelligence network fails, ask your colleague's son or daughter and they will find out for you through Facebook.
Step two: Land up at the rave right when the party is peaking and announce your presence.
Step three: Realise that the music is too loud for anyone to pay attention. (This is the most important step. You skip it and the IB will think the cops are regular at rave parties)
Step four: Head for the DJ's console. Let the gentleman to be the boss for two minutes. Allow him to say "Uncle you are at the wrong place". This will set the tone for step five.
Step five: Give the DJ two tight slaps and watch him cry like a paranoid baby. Shut down the music and arrest everyone present.
Step six: Hold a press conference the next day announcing that a handful of peddlers and nearly two hundred drug users were arrested. Make special mention of the fact that most of youngsters caught had rich parents.
Step seven: Go home and let the idiot box do the talking. Enjoy! This is your moment. If you don't get your kicks, hang on for six months to a year and repeat the cycle from step number one.
Game for some good press
Compared to the police's style of committing criminal encounters, busting a rave party is by far a boring business. But like most boring things it has its benefits. The media can raise questions about an encounter. It can allege, without any proof whatsoever, that the police had picked up the dead criminals a few days earlier and bumped them off later.
But no one in their right mind, for obvious reasons, can claim that the police covertly organised the rave party and then raided it to earn medals and promotions.
So, while a risky proposition like an encounter can lead to suspension (if proved fake) or medals and out-of-turn promotions (if they are genuine) a boring idea like busting a rave doesn't have such dramatic endings. A rave bust usually leads to positive publicity for the cops who did it and a serious envy among their peers who thought the idea was too boring.
It also gives the general public --- a group scientifically proven to have a short short-term memory --- an idea that something really serious is being done about the entire business of drugs trafficking.
Questions no one is asking
Following the rave party bust in Mumbai certain startling facts came to light. The police claimed that youngsters arrested and duly tested for drug consumption were doing new substances like LSD and ecstasy besides the usual suspects like charas and ganja.
Now, either the Mumbai Police officials are way too dumb or they were born yesterday because none of these substances are new in any way.
LSD is by far the oldest synthetic psychedelic known to man and according to many experts fuelled the hippie movement in the 1960s and most of the music of the Grateful Dead.
It was invented in the 1940s and by the 1960s it had reached young people all over the world including India. When its creator Dr Robert Hoffman died last year most national newspapers carried huge articles about him and LSD, his problem child.
Verifiable accounts by reformed drug addicts of the 70s like Mahesh Bhatt bear testimony to their prolonged use of LSD and other drugs. Clearly either the Mumbai Police doesn't have its facts right or is plainly bluffing.
As far as ecstasy is concerned the pill has been around for more than a decade in India and cannot be called new by any stretch of imagination. That leaves charas and ganja, two versions of marijuana that were completely legal for consumption in India before the Narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances act was promulgated in 1986 by the Indian state. If none of this is new then what's the fuss about?
Now we're warming up to the real question.
If all these banned substances aren't new then someone must be trading in them big time and making a killing? Who are the top five drug lords of India that take care of the supply, distribution and procurement of these illegal drugs?
No one knows; at least not the police. And the worst part is that none of the drug peddlers arrested regularly by the police have any clue either. They are way too low in the supply chain to have an idea of who is their boss.
In a city where an auto driver knows the local drug peddler and the local pimp and can take you there without a commission, the arrests of drug users and peddlers from a nightclub may be legally justified but on every other count it is a serious eye wash.
An Impossible scenario
Here's an imaginary scenario that is impossible for all practical purposes. Mumbai police gets serious about drug trafficking and chooses not to make vague arrests to get cheap thrills and publicity.
The crime branch chief makes a crack team. They decide to act on a rave party happening in a popular nightclub in the city.
Instead of busting the rave, the crack team acquires invitations to the event and lands up in attire that doesn't raise any eyebrows.
Grooving to the music the team gets friendly with both the peddlers and the drug users to work their way up the drug supply chain.
They buy a large quantity of various illicit substances drugs from the peddlers and take their numbers for further use. Additionally, they also befriend a number of drug users with the aim of getting contacts of peddlers who couldn't make it to the party.
The next day, they prepare a list of peddlers along with their phone numbers and details about the kind of substances each one of them peddles. The list is forwarded to their senior officials who waste no time in sending a request for electronic surveillance to the state home ministry.
The substances purchased by the team are packed off to a forensic laboratory for purity testing. This will help the team understand which peddler is peddling the purer stuff and which ones are mixing their booty. Clearly the one's selling pure stuff make for stronger leads.
The surveillance allows the team to listen in to every word spoken by the peddlers. Soon they will get in touch with their senior peddlers who in turn will lead the team to other bigger players and the network will expose itself.
This scenario is impossible because by the time a big fish in the chain is identified the team will realise its bosses are no longer interested.
They will then be asked to stop all this FBI/DEA business and get back to routine work Mumbai style.
In all likelihood, there will be another rave bust somewhere.
Do let me know what you think!
Rave on,
Sincerely,
Mayank
Many Thanks Dr Marwah.
Down the road.
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