What protects us from being stabbed in our own homes?

India extracts a very high price from those who hurt its rich and middle class but this shield could weaken

- MANU JOSEPH

Always, it is about us. If film star Saif Ali Khan can be stabbed by an intruder in his home, that too in a Bandra flat, what does it say about our safety and those whom we love? Hours after the attack, there was a familiar sight outside the hospital where he was recovering. His family and friends emerged from cars. There was a glow about them and their clothes looked unusual as they walked through a parted crowd of onlookers who looked like the rest of India, poorer and more provincial, and with no glow. This India is also what protects India's elite from criminal dangers that lurk not far from where they live. Like Saif Ali Khan, many of us live in secure buildings, with cameras that probably work and guards in fancy-dress paramilitary costumes. They do protect us, but our primary protection, the thing that really guards us, is something else, something fundamentally Indian.

The attack on Khan is an aberration. Generally, India is safe for its urban middle class and the affluent. Safe as in safe from criminal danger. You could end up dead on the road because of Indian road design or how Indians drive, or lose your life to lax enforcement of safety protocols in buildings, but the middle class and rich do not usually need to worry about criminals. In some aspects, we are safe not only compared to middle-income countries in Africa and Latin America, but also in comparison with the West. And that is because of an Indian quality that is not exactly noble, which is also why it works.