Tell me something – what are the chances of walking in on an intruder who has parked his arse completely in your car?
Pretty good I would say after last night’s incident.
It must have been around 10 pm when I touched Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Andheri to receive my sister in-law and her kids who had been vacationing in Dubai for the past couple of weeks.
There I met up with mum who had come along with our driver in the other car. Since they were carrying excess luggage, we decided to take two separate cars just in case. By 10.30 ish, they were out and after a typical desi welcome (minus the garlands) we headed towards to the car-park area.
Mum and my 3 year-old niece went ahead with the driver whereas sis-in-law, 6-year- old nephew and I headed towards my Santro which was parked quite a few blocks away from the other car. Busy chit-chatting with my nephew basically enquiring on the number of Dunkin Donuts he’d managed to gobble up during his trip , we were soon a few steps away from our car.
And that’s when I saw it – a blurry figure rifling through things in the backseat of my car. For a second I thought it was a mirage of some sort, a man simply standing behind my car going through his own stuff. But when I saw my tiffin bag in his hand, it hit me, ‘Fuck this is my shit’.
Without giving it another thought, I ran towards my car….screaming out loud (mainly directed towards my sis-in-law) “Vinky, there is a chor in my car”. On reaching my car, I stopped only momentarily, grasping the image of a stranger who now had his hands on my office bag…in an impulse I latched onto his collar and pulled him out. I guess just the thought of someone treating my personal space as his baap ka jaagir (pop’s property), pissed me to the core. I mean absolute core. All my anger was coming out in the form of choicest of choicest desi-gaalies – mother, sister, fucker…you name it.
In a matter of seconds a couple of men gathered around my car, asking what the deal was. “Boss yeh chor hai” is what I yelled and immediately two men stepped forward and caught hold of him.
What was truly shocking though was not the act itself but the reaction of the intruder on being caught. All throughout, he appeared calm. “Main saamaan deta hoon na. Police ko kya boolate ho”, “Gaadi khulli thee toh meri galti kya”, “Jaane doh yaar, main driver hoon” were some of his dialogues – minus the begging, the pleading, crocodile tears and the works.
It took me a good 10 minutes or so to locate a security official and I had to walk all the way to the arrival terminal (while the intruder was in the custody of those who offered to help, under Vinky’s supervision). In the presence of a havaldar, two men literally ripped that man’s clothes apart – and out came my Sony mobile phone (which I had left in the dashboard, the genius that I am), iPhone handsfree (which I thought I had lost), sunglasses and a multiple USB cable which I had picked up from office the very same day.
And it doesn’t end here. Our man apparently happened to be a pitara of stolen commodities: mobile phones, chargers, handsfree and sunglasses were some of the items that were recovered from his much too deep pockets.
While all this commotion was going on, an airline official walked up to Vinky (who was standing at a distance with my nephew) and advised her not to get into police hassles but just scoot now that we had recovered our maal. And that’s exactly what we did though I wasn’t too sure if that was the right thing to do. As we were returning, we laughed about it and marveled at how a few minutes here or there would have made a world of difference to the outcome.
However, on a serious note, this incident has got me thinking about a couple of things. Such as:
1. What if the men who helped me weren’t around… wee hours or otherwise, the parking lot is anyways an extremely deserted dimly-lit area.
2. What if the robber had a knife on him?
3. Why were there no security guards in the parking lot? Do we really need five men to sit in one small booth to issue parking lot tickets?
4. Why did I pay for the parking lot ticket at all? Does their responsibility end at issuing an over-priced ticket?
5. As my nephew asked me, ‘Are you sure the robber left no bomb in the car?” What if there was a bomb in my car? I know this sounds paranoid, but if a small thing like this could have happened, what’s stopping the ‘bigger’ stuff from happening?
6. Did I do the right thing by not going through the police formalities? Did I do the robber a favour or a disfavor by leaving him to the mercy of the already-charged up crowd?
I seem to have a knack of catching robbers (Oh, in case you haven’t read, there’s a bedroom story as well.) Guess I just happen to be at all the wrong places at the wrong time, or should I put it the other way round?
[...] finds an intruder in her car…in the middle of the parking lot of Mumbai’s international airport. What was truly [...]
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