I just did it again. Walking home, minding everyone else’s business, I see my neighbor’s grandson swoop around the corner on a motorbike, no helmet. He sees me at the same moment I see him and I watch his face change. He’s calculating: Has she noticed? Is there time to reverse and escape via a different street? Then he resigns himself: “Sorry, Auntie!” Shamefaced, he reaches down to his feet where his helmet is neatly tucked away and he puts it on.

I glare at him fiercely while delivering my usual lecture: “How many heads do you have? What would your mother do if anything happened to you? Do you have any idea how many accidents happen in this city every single day? Blah, blah, blah.”

He nods nervously and half-smiles, all the while edging further away, visibly longing to be rid of me. I am that woman, that slightly deranged person the children know to steer clear of.

Is anyone else afflicted with a heightened sense of responsibility for all of the world’s problems? It’s a serious handicap.

I’m not joking and I’m not trying to make myself sound altruistic and good because I am well aware that a nature like mine can be insufferable.

I feel personally affronted if I see someone running a red light, or driving in the wrong lane, or playing loud music late at night and I make frequent citizen’s arrests. I also try creative approaches to instructing the ignorant. I can even take my own mistakes and turn them into yet another opportunity for preaching. I interfere when parents hit their children and don’t even get me started on how I react when I see kids throwing rocks at dogs.

But I’m not just an avenging angel. I also feel called upon to solve everyone else’s problems: someone needs an apartment? It’s MY duty to find them one. Someone needs blood or a job or a school admission or a loan? All up to me.

Lord, what I wouldn’t give to be that fun-loving person who simply smiles or looks the other way when people behave stupidly, meanly or illegally. Or the one who can listen sympathetically to a person’s litany of problems and complaints and never feel compelled to do anything about them.

I’m a big believer in the “it takes a village” concept. Except that I seem to have appointed myself pradhan, constable, school teacher, pundit, dai, moneylender, and quack. Not many roles left for anyone else, I’m afraid.

So save me from myself! The next time you see me about to swing onto my white steed, revving myself up to deliver justice, jobs and a pint of red blood, could you just ask me: Aap kis khet ki mooli ho? (Of which field are you a radish of?)