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It’s called the morality monologue. Nobody wants to talk about it. So, it was a pleasurable surprise when I found three friends willing to discuss and share their experience and transformation.

To start the dialogue, let me raise a small question: Are you a criminal? No, we are not talking about murder, dacoity, fake currency, loan-recovery deaths, vigilante justice, hit-and-run incidents or rioting.

We are talking about soft crime, white-glove violation, executive felony, Gen X deviance, civic defiance and such other unpardonable behaviour that makes you a soft criminal.

Just jot down the number of times you have spat in public places, cut lanes, vroomed after a drinking binge, offered to bribe or bribed a public official, wielded influence to admit your child to the best school, and even paid through your nose for an identity proof. Your moral balance-sheet, or imbalance-sheet, has very few assets, but lots of liablities.

Next time you see a cop, smile. If he fines, pay up. For, it’s better to declare yourself as a soft criminal rather than wriggle out of any such encounter.

My friend Rahul, who was fined for crisscrossing lanes, says he feels bad about joining the brigade of soft criminals. “But I have now realised that you can’t be a good boss, a great father and a super hubby if you are a chronic lane-cutter. And I have to thank the cop for reminding me about that.”

Is Rahul suffering from guilt pangs or is he trying to be different in soft crime-infested Mumbai? Or is it a case of boomtown angst, where you start searching for a morality ladder as soon as you have finished scaling prosperity.

Well, soft crime comes in all hues. Perhaps the best insight into soft crime comes from the movie, My Fair Lady. When asked whether he had any morals left, pat comes the reply from Eliza Doolittle’s dad: “No, no. Can’t afford them, governor.

Neither could you if you was as poor as me.” Which is why morality is always perilously perched atop the economic ladder.

A conversation I had with like-minded soft criminals about their offences casts a strobe light on the contentious issue. A friend said he must be clocking a ton of soft crimes every week.

It starts with his grossly underpaid maid, followed by his chauffeur who never gets paid for his non-driving errands like babysitting and shopping, and ends with unfinished projects at the workplace.

Of course, there are minor felonies during commutes to office like road screams, signal violations, and zebra overshootings. Even as he was recounting his dark deeds, I could see a road sage emerge out of road rage.

An executive explained how he had to wrestle with his conscience every time he interviewed candidates. “In a way, I decide their future, but I simply don’t spend enough time with each interviewee.

Typically, you would require about an hour to find out whether the candidate has the right skills, another hour to figure out whether he would fit into your organisational culture and its brand universe, and at least 30 minutes to ascertain whether he has leadership qualities.

All I get is 15 to 20 minutes to assess a candidate. It’s criminal. How can you decide somebody’s fate in 15 minutes? I have now decided to limit the number of candidates; it makes me feel better.”

A tutor described her experience with her student, which eventually transformed her. “When I asked him to pen an essay on ‘Making a choice’, he ended the piece with a giveaway line: ‘I have kilometres to go before I crash out. And kilometres to go before I crash out.’

I told him he had mutilated Robert Frost’s poem, and could have retained the original by attributing it to the source. Simply aghast, he told me all content was a commodity and could be repurposed as long as it was done intelligently.

After all, search engines spider content from everywhere and blogs have free-for-all text, ideas and links. He called it the open-source movement.”

That effectively sealed the argument about soft crime in the tutor’s mind. Like me, she had been sucked into a new dimension where a new morality was taking roots: cyberspace. And both of us were clueless about the values being versioned there.

Email: vinaykamat@dnaindia.net