Incredible. I watch as it nudges past lane one. A cab glides past to lock it in place. It peeps out on the right but traffic is flowing past at top speed. There is no way the hurtling missiles will accommodate an intruder. It recedes a few inches. Just then, our light changes. But none of us can move.

The offending car is sitting bang in the middle of the road, unable to go forward and unable to return. Traffic is jammed for miles from the way I came. Everyone is in a hurry and tempers are frayed. And there it lies, a horizontal time-bomb waiting to explode. I give up on my appointment. As the horns screech allaround me, I wait fearfully for what will happen. And then, he emerges. A slight man in a dirty shirt. He holds a hand up for patience, runs into the deathly stream going down, stops it, pushes back a cab that is about to take advantage of the chasm, waves the Esteem forward, makes a circling motion and sets it on its path. We surge forward. We have missed a signal. But that's all. I see our saviour trundling off nonchalantly towards the footpath. Who was he? Just the average Mumbai Busybody.

You must have seen him sometime or the other, more often than not, a nondescript sort of person, someone whose face you'd probably find hard to conjure up in your mind again. He's that generic. Agewise he could be anywhere between 15 and 30, slightly built, in grubby clothes, bright curious eyes, a casual air and a remarkable ability to instantly take charge of a situation. A natural born leader. In fact it is such a familiar sight: a well-dressed man, possibly a highly qualified manager, standing next to his car thathas just been involved in a minor incident. He is sweating profusely. The tension is written all over his face, any moment he could come apart. Will he? Won't he? Will he? No, he won't because there is the Busybody. All at once, in control. He is pacifying the crowd, negotiating with the aggrieved party, talking to the cop if there is one around, whispering advice to our man in trouble, flinging a few wisecracks to dispel the tension and generally making himself indispensable in a situation that has nothing whatsoever to do with him.

Well, often there is the matter of a small fee of course. And sometimes, as it is well known, the Busybody's air of authority stems from the fact that he arranged your little misfortune. You know how it is - your tyre is curiously out of air and help is curiously close at hand. Or in the monsoons -- block drains and then show up to push the cars. But then enterprise comes in many forms. You get the bad with the good.

I remember some years ago, I was driving home with friendsfrom town. We had just got past Mahalaxmi when the car started wobbling on one side. We stopped to examine it and sure enough there was a puncture. It was almost three am. The streets were deserted. It was hopeless. None of us had much experience in the tyre-changing department. The job would have taken ages.

But suddenly, out of the blue, he was there, winding up the jack, taking off the bolts, bringing out the spare. A little money exchanged hands and we were on our way.

Maybe other cities have their Busybodies, though I doubt it. But this is probably the only city in the world where they run a day and night operation.