Shoplifting lies at the crossroads of socialism and capitalism – except instead of intended equal distribution of pilfered items, the latter become part of one’s own inventory. Or, at least, that was how it was in the Satya Yug when I dabbled in the penumbral arts.
It was a rite of passage, a societal check to see how buffed up a shop’s security system was, much like the sterling service that hackers provide these days. After an early, quick read through Machiavelli’s Discourse About the Provision of Money, I maintained one fundamental rule when engaging in nifty pilfering: buy something, anything, when stealing something else. This would always significantly mitigate the retailer’s suspicion by marking me, regardless of my more nefarious plans, as a bona fide buyer.
I would buy a postcard or two while keenly aware of the baby bump under my jacket registering the presence of Arthur C Clarke’s Tales From the White Hart (which subsequently became a birthday gift for a friend), or the last book I ever stole, a Penguin Classics edition of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I realised much later what Thomas Crown felt like stealing the Monet.
I was never apprehended – although a friend of mine with whom I had once gone on a raiding mission was after being found with a Sunil Gangopadhyay paperback under his jacket. He was let off only after being threatened of ‘shame’ and his mother came to pick him up. (I last saw him grinning at me from behind the speeding car.) Even as the man behind the counter had thundered, ‘It’s shameful how a school like yours produces kids like you two these days!’ I felt the paperback ride safely against my belt and then (and still) non-existent abs.
Alas, in this Amrit Kaal (one assumes this Vedic period applies not just to India, but to the world at large), shoplifting has taken on a sinister, dangerous tone. Britain has seen a surge in store thefts not just from ladies with prams and handbags, anti-capitalist teenagers (who will grow up to be bankers), but also reportedly people stealing to finance drug use and working for organised gangs.Shoplifting incidents reported by the police have risen by 25% in Rishi Sunakland in the year ending June 2023, with some establishments like the supermarket chain Co-op recording almost 1,000 incidents a year across its 2,400 stores from January-June this year. This is shoplifting qualitatively and quantitatively on the scale of 8th century Viking raids of that island.Some blame the rising cost of living in Britain for this ‘epidemic’. Others blame police apathy. But economically muscular US is also facing a shoplifting-all-boats tide. Retailers have started stocking healthcare and beauty products behind plexiglass. The US National Retail Federation‘s 2023 Retail Security Survey (rb.gy/i4ay0) has found that ‘retail crime, violence and theft continue to impact the retail industry at unprecedented levels’.
Even Donald ‘My Election Was Stolen’ Trump popped up last month during a speech to California Republicans saying, ‘We will immediately stop all of the pillaging and theft. Very simply: If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store.’ Los Angeles leads in highest ‘shrink rate’ (read: ‘lost inventory’) in the US, followed by the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento.
In the heyday of gentleman-gentlewoman shoplifting, shoplifters, unlike gunpoint robbers, or retailers rarely resorted to violence. There’s a reason why ‘shoplifting’ or ‘shoplifter’ was never defined in law. Dang, shoplifting didn’t even feel like a crime. Even when caught, it was more of a sin.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame copy I had nicked today feels like a trophy from a different era, when Morrissey sang in a faux call to arms to unbalance the retail-industrial complex: ‘Shoplifters of the world/
Unite and take over.’ These days, it doesn’t sound faux at all. Glad I went legit.
