The mustached gentleman who first informed me about the incident was completely non hyper in his reporting. Like the proverbial lull before the storm, little did I then realize that all hell was about to break loose.
“Someone’s pelting stones from the rooftop”, he repeated, even as I listened to the words in disbelief. It was a busy weekend at the Restaurant with people waiting downstairs, outside the building and near the pavement, to be seated in the Restaurant which was on the first and second floor of the building.
As I hurried to the terrace from the service staircase, the mental image that I had was that of harmless pebbles. Once upstairs I was surprised to find a bespectacled customer already standing near the edge of the parapet, peering down. Surprised, as we don’t have any service up there- because of some outdated municipal regulations- the open terrace is in fact used by our staff to catch some fresh air on their break/mealtimes.
As I looked down I saw a crowd of people looking up angrily. In fact one of them challenged me to come down and explain why we were throwing stones. Taken aback I answered I was just checking what was going on.
The bespectacled person had come up to see who the stone thrower was. We looked around only to find some of the staff on their dinner break with no clue about the commotion downstairs.
As I accompanied him down, there was a lady waiting for him on the second floor, who told him that the stone(s) may have come from the neighboring rooftops. With this piece of reassuring information I walked down with them to the first floor reception area.
As we got down the customer staircase there was a commotion near the cash counter. A heavily built young man, wearing a green tee-shirt was threatening one of the service staff members. I calmly walked up to him to intervene and to inform him this was all a minor misunderstanding.
As he turned to face me, there was this menacing look to him. When I told him about the confusion, he would have none of it and asked me if I was calling him a liar. Before I could retort he pointed to the girl standing next to him who, almost on cue, slightly raised her tee-shirt to show some redness on the side of her stomach. My head was spinning as I realized that the situation was direr than I’d first assumed.
I mumbled to them to accompany me downstairs, to talk to a lady who could clarify this situation. As I walked towards the stairs, the angry young man shouted from behind, asking me to stay. I turned back to them to again ask them to come with me. At that instant I realized that the original mustached gentleman- not so gentle or calm anymore- was standing next to them, a stern look about him.
For some reason the sight of him made me a tad angry, making eye contact I told them again that the confusion could be resolved momentarily if they simply accompanied me downstairs. Suddenly they relented. On reaching the Restaurant entrance downstairs, I was surprised not to find the person who should have been there taking the waiting list. In any case I looked around to try and find the lady who knew that the stones had come from our neighboring roofs.
On spotting her, I asked her to repeat what she’d said upstairs. She now said that she was merely voicing her opinion while there were eyewitnesses who’d seen the stones come from our roof.
As my mind raced to comprehend this, another lady in the crowd showed me the stone that had apparently bounced off the pavement and cut the chin of a child whose parents had then rushed him to a hospital. It was a piece of concrete the size of my fist which from a rooftop it would be a lethal weapon. I was surrounded by angry faces & voices, everyone in the crowd must've been scared that the stone could've landed on their head.
Another person told me that a brick, pieces of which he showed me on the road, had landed on the other side. As I walked through the crowd to look that way, the angry chap in the green tee told me that the brick pieces had splintered on hitting the road, a piece from which had hit his young lady.
At this point I started trying to explain that it was crazy to assume that a restaurant would pelt stones on its waiting customers. In all likelihood, I continued, the stones must’ve come from one of the neighboring roofs, which was desolate. Someone in the crowd shouted from behind that they were sure that the stones had come from our roof, another added that even if they hadn't, it was our responsibility. Someone shouted that there was no point arguing and the police should be called. Another voice from the mob said that the staff on the roof should be brought down so that the truth could be slapped out of them.
I looked at the faces of some of the regulars and continued my attempts at rational dialogue. I kept repeating my argument about the irrationality of their assumption. Realizing that they wanted some action and not mere words I added that I’ll go up and investigate. In the meanwhile the green teed young man started walking away to his car with his friend saying that we should have take care. I nodded at him in agreement. A few of the others too left thereafter.
The person responsible for taking the waiting list suddenly reappeared (It was much later that he told me that he'd had to literally run upstairs as he'd felt he'd be lynched if he stayed when the incident happened). I asked him to call upstairs and check on the table vacancy status. Soon some people started walking upstairs to take their tables.
The original mustached person along with the bespectacled man from the roof then accompanied me upstairs to check on the roof. As I climbed to the reception area I saw some vacant tables and called the waiting chap to send more people up. Simultaneously I made eye contact with the service staff and asked them to remain in their allocated stations. The idea was to reassure them that the situation was slowly coming back to normal.
On the roof we found half a dozen uniformed kitchen staff having their meal. The mustached person asked me to call out all the other staff from inside. I walked to the dining shed, the entrance to which was away from them, and asked the 4-5 kitchen staff there to accompany me to answer the questions related to the incident. They came out and told the duo that they had just for their meal break and as far as they were aware nobody from our restaurant had thrown any stones.
The bespectacled man then tried threatening them with the police but the kitchen staff confidently repeated their answer. The two men looked at each other, each asking the other to call the cops. As I glanced down the parapet I was relieved to see that the crowd had dispersed. The security guard who should've been at the entrance but had been sent on a chore in the evening too had returned (His investigations later found similar stones on the dark and desolate neighboring rooftop)
As I walked them down, I remarked matter-of -factly that this whole situation was ridiculous and there was no way that restaurant staff who depend on customers for their bread and butter would actually throw stones at them. The mustached man’s final meek retort was there could be sick people anywhere.
As we came down to the second level, the bespectacled person’s lady friend was on a table and he joined her. Walking down with the mustached person to the first level I saw several other hostiles having dinner, chatting and laughing. The mob had disbanded.
