That was the first mobile I had ever touched. Before that I used to steal the shoes and slippers of devotees who were foolish enough to leave them at the bottom of the steps rather than give them for safekeeping to the old lady who charges a mere 50 paise per pair.

If truth be told, my exploits as a slipper thief were nothing to write home about. The pickings were slim, though I did manage a couple of pairs of almost brand-new Reeboks and Nikes. Had they not been in sizes nine and ten, I would have kept them for myself instead of selling them to the cobbler at one tenth of their price.

I took the fat lady's mobile to Delite Mobile Mart, the mobilephone shop just outside the temple. Madan, the owner, gave me two hundred rupees for it, ten times what I received for a used pair of slippers. That first mobile introduced me to a whole new world of SIM cards and PIN numbers. Bata shoes and Action sandals soon gave way to Nokias and Motorolas. That was when I formed a partnership with my best friend Lallan, realizing that stealing mobiles required much greater coordination and planning than stealing shoes. Our favourite targets were cars stopped at red lights with rolled-down windows and mobiles glinting on the dashboards. While Lallan would divert the driver's attention, I would creep up on the other side, snatch the phone from the dashboard and then run like mad through the meandering alleys and side roads that we knew like the back of our hands.

I have kept a record of each and every mobile phone we stole over a three-year period. The total came to ninety-nine. It was good while it lasted. It gave me enough to live a modest life, buy a few decent clothes, have flings with a couple of girls from the locality. The funny thing is, I didn't have to sell the girls any fake story about my being a medical rep or some shit like that. They got their thrills from hearing about my exploits as a mobile-phone thief. And a handset makes a much-sought-after present. A girl will let you touch her breasts for a Motorola C650. She might even open her legs for a Nokia N93.

Not that I am too much into that sort of thing. The mohalla girls who work as maids and babysitters are just cheap lays. Dark and coarse, they are good only for fulfilling a physical need. What I really crave are the rich chicks, the memsahibs with their English accents and low-slung jeans. I admire their flawless complexions and fair skin. I gape in amazement at the sleek curve of their waists and the delicate bones of their made-up faces. I inhale the expensive perfume on their bodies, watch the seductive roll of their hips and feel dizzy. But I know they are good only for my dreams. For someone like me, they are almost as unattainable as Shabnam Saxena. Still, I was hopeful of at least ensnaring the middle-class daughter of a chief engineer who was a regular visitor to the temple, when my fledgling career as a mobile-phone thief was abruptly cut short by tragedy.

We had nicked a Samsung from a Mercedes stopped near Qutub Minar. I had managed my getaway with the mobile quite smoothly, but Lallan couldn't disappear fast enough. He was chased by the driver, nabbed and hauled up to the police station, where he was personally interrogated by Sub-Inspector Vijay Singh Yadav, known throughout the area as the Butcher of Mehrauli.

Lallan and I had grown up together. I lived with Mother in the temple premises; he stayed with his family in the sprawling Sanjay Gandhi slum just outside. We played football and cricket on the roadside, went to the same municipal school, which Lallan dropped out of in Class Six while I continued right through to Intermediate. He was my partner in everything, from hustling shoes from the temple to teasing the neighbourhood girls. I called him my best friend, but in reality he was closer than a brother to me. A lesser person would have blurted out the truth when confronted by the Butcher of Mehrauli, but Lallan stuck to his code of loyalty, adamantly refusing to confess.

What happened subsequently in the police lock-up is a dark memory which still gives me nightmares. Lallan was stripped, strung up by a rope, and then kicked, caned and flogged for three consecutive nights while his aged father pleaded and begged and cried and grovelled in front of the police station. But Lallan still refused to squeal on me.

On the fourth day, he disappeared. The police claimed they had released him. We searched for him everywhere, even as far afield as AIIMS and Saket, but found no clue to his whereabouts.

We discovered his bloated, mangled body three days later, lying in a shallow ditch near Andheria Bagh. Flies were buzzing over the sores on his chest and maggots were crawling out of his pus-filled eyes as though he was a common slum dog.

Lallan's death was my wake-up call. It brought home to me the stark fact that I couldn't even take life for granted. So I gave up stealing mobile phones and resolved to make something of myself. But what you make of your life is a function of who you are. If I had a family pedigree and political connections, my university degree would have landed me a cushy job in some air-conditioned office, or at least made me a peon in a government department. But when your mother is a lowly sweeper earning 1,200 rupees per month and you are an ex-thief, your career options are limited. For a brief while I worked as a book-keeper at a grocery store, then as fleet supervisor at a transport company, and finally as a servant for the Bhusiyas. I was a failure in all three. The easy life as a mobilephone thief had spoiled me. I couldn't see myself counting cartons, sniffing diesel or serving tea for a living.

So I have decided to go back to the only job I do well – stealing mobiles.

Stealing a mobile phone is not as easy as it seems. It really is a fine art. Just as a pickpocket takes your wallet from right under your nose, the mobile thief makes away with your phone. Far from a crude snatch-and-grab operation, it is more like a disappearance trick, a sleight of hand. One moment you have the mobile in front of you and the next moment it is gone. Like magic.

It is also an art which you never lose. A cricketer can be off form, but not a thief. I know it is only a question of time before I nick another mobile and score a century.

Today is 26 January, Republic Day. And I am hiding behind the HP petrol pump on the Mehrauli-Badarpur Road and breathing heavily. I have just stolen my first mobile phone in a year.

I had gone to visit a friend who lives in the tenements behind the Star Multiplex and was walking back to the bus stop. It was late evening and the neon lights of the street lamps were shrouded in the hazy glow of winter. While I was waiting at a red light, rubbing my hands to keep them warm, a red Maruti Esteem pulled up in front of me. The driver was a wiry man with curly hair and a square jaw. What struck me about him was the way he gripped the steering wheel, as if it would come unstuck any minute. In the peak of winter he was sweating like a pig. The man radiated tension like a blower radiates heat. There was a mobile phone on the dashboard and the window was open halfway. Pure habit took over from there. Just as the light changed to green, my hand darted inside with the speed of a bullet. The driver stared ahead unblinkingly, his knuckles turning white. He engaged the gear and the car surged forward, leaving me standing on the pavement with a very stylish mobile phone in my hands. It was a brand-new Nokia E61, so new that the cellophane had not even been removed from the display window. I knew it would fetch me a lot of money on the black market.

I think a woman in a Ford Ikon immediately behind the Esteem saw me take the mobile. She glared at me as she drove past. Before she could raise the alarm, I decamped from the scene, criss-crossing streets for almost two kilometres till I reached the safety of the petrol pump.