The fountain in New Friends Colony Community centre is a good place to hang out. Especially when you’re broke. It dominates the main square in New Friends Colony Community Centre. Surrounded by shops, restaurants, cafes and pubs, there is enough room in the square ‘to move through and not be in’. A typical circular structure with four cemented swans rising from its centre, the fountain has become a landmark to indicate direction; a meeting place before one goes somewhere else. No one comes to the fountain to look at the water, the grass, the flowers or the swans. It is enclosed by an iron grill with a few gaps, large enough to allow a child in.

Small, semi-circular, cemented seats outside the iron grill are used by people to sit around, chat, smoke. One evening, last winter, I sat at the fountain with a couple of friends from college. Bikas, Gaurav and I were having one of our usual mind-numbing conversations on life, ‘forelife’ and afterlife that eveing, as we looked at what was formerly Ramlal’s /chai/ shop – one of its kind in the entire Community Centre, a perpetual embarrassment to its more stylish neighbour, Bon Bon, the pastry shop.

Ramlal was no urban legend. Still, quite a few people in community centre remember him as the obstinate guy who ran an old /dhaba/ style shop in the ‘posh’ market. Some say that he even went to America but came back and opened this /chai/ shop where you could have tea even if you were broke.

As we sat, sipping cold tea from plastic cups, reminiscing about Ramlal, Gaurav saw a man in khaki filming us with what looked like semi-professional camera. We stopped talking. There we were – three very average specimens of the human race with no glorious/ignominious past nor any such hopes or plans for the future, and this man, this police constable filming us.

What had we done?

This was the first thought that sprung to my mind. We had been learning about cameras, filming perspectives and points-of-view as part of our college curriculum, but here was a man of law, with a revolver hanging down the holster and a camera in his hand, face partially hidden, shooting us!

Enquiries were made and questions about our identity answered. After we confirmed that it was not specially us that he was shooting and that it was routine, we proceeded to ask a few questions – albeit tentatively at first. As law-abiding students of Jamia Millia Islamia University, we thought it wiser not to aggravate the Delhi Police (DP).

Pandu* proudly told us that the Delhi Police had initiated this unique programme for citizens’ safety and national security. The programme entailed shooting video of ‘suspicious characters’ (like us!) thronging the New Friends Colony Community Centre market and generating profiles out of the material.

A few days ago, DP had caught an alleged terrorist and he had apparently had dinner here prior to his arrest. Since prevention is better than cure, therefore the drive by the DP to film ‘suspicious’ looking people, and keep a tab on them. Who knows what they might do when? We saw the footage, appreciated the reality TV-like material and went our way.

I don’t know how far this exercise would go in curbing crime, but I, a regular visitor to the Community Centre, avoided the place for a long time.

• not his real name