Lost And Found

My daughter and my wife are coming home from a trip to Guntur. They’d gone there to attend a wedding of a niece of mine. Their train, the Andhra Pradesh Express, will, if it were on time, steam into the New Delhi railway station at 1 p.m. My plan is to leave home at 11, spend sometime at my office and from there proceed to the railway station at 12.30 p.m.

I secure the front door of our terraced second floor flat with an Aligarh lock. I press the shackle into the body of the lock and pull the body down to check if it was properly locked in. I bolt the other doors from inside. Next, I open the door that leads me out on to the stairway. I put an Aligarh lock to it too and check if it was locked in securely. I climb down past the two flats on the first floor where I skirt a stinking garbage can and the owner’s house on the ground floor.

At 11, I leave Hauz Khas where we live and take an auto. There is a traffic jam at the Safdarjung airport where a new flyover is coming up. Past Prithviraj Road flanked by elegant colonial style buildings housing ministers and members of parliament, past the India Gate architected by Lutyens as a memorial for the 11,000 Indian soldiers who died in the first world war, Patiala House and the Supreme Court I reach my office in Link House opposite the University Grants Commission. Arts editor Goel is free. We talk about art, Kishen Khanna, Jatin Das and Swaminathan. He tells me the art capital of the world is Boston. I say it is New York. I’ve tea Goel has offered and check my watch. It is time to go to the station.

In front of my office I get into a Delhi contraption mounted on a three-wheeled chassis It is known locally as phut phutti that shuttles between Link House and the Statesman House on Barakhamba Road on the outer circle of Connaught Place. On its way the noisy vehicle rumbles past Tilak Bridge, Lady Irwin College, Sapru House, Mandi House, Sahitya Akademi and Modern School before it stops at the Soviet Information Centre a few feet ahead of the Statesman House. I pay one rupee to the sardarji and get off at Connaught Place. I walk down to the State Road and where it ends I enter the railway station from the exit gate.

The loudspeakers on the platform shout in two languages through the rumble and roar of passengers, vendors of cigarettes, cool drinks, beverages, books etc that the train is on time. In another five minutes I sight the front of the WDM 2C diesel engine near the outer signal hauling the Andhra Pradesh Express tired from its trek across several states. Soon the train is running close to the brow of the platform. I stand three feet away from the brow.

The Perambur-built bogies are whizzing past the platform, I, I A/C, II A/C, II Sleeper Car, II, General and so on.  The train seemed to plunge into the heart of Pahargunj.  In a blur I catch a glimpse of my daughter waving at me. I wave back and sprint to where her car is likely to stop. The train clangs to a halt, as it must. At the entrance of the Sleeper Car, I see my daughter in salwar kameez and behind her the face of my wife wilted from travel and motherly care. I help them disembark with their bags.

In a flash a coolie in red uniform snatches their bags from me. After haggling he settles for ten rupees. The coolie brings the bags out to the median separating the station building from the taxi line. He demands fifteen. He is ready to make a scene, usual tactics of an Indian porter.  He walks off with fifteen rupees. The taxis next. The first cabby I talk to in the line quotes hundred rupees. The second demands ninety, three times more than what the meter would read. None of them is ready to crank down the meter. Hardly do I make up my mind ten other cabbies mob me shooting their quotations. It’s hot outside. To escape the sun and the stinking cabbies milling around I agree to pay sixty to the first cabby. Okay, he says.

The three of us sit in the taxi, happy to be together again. We’re on our way home now and that euphoria starts a conversation.

‘So, what’s the news?’ I ask my wife.

‘Nothing. I thought the boy did not deserve to become part of our fold,’ she says.

‘Why do you think like that?’ I ask her.

‘He is boorish and looks it very much. Just at the time of the muhurtam he said he wouldn’t like the girl to complete her master’s course. Our people caved in,’ she says.

‘How did it happen?’ I ask her.

‘They were afraid of loss of face with friends and relatives present at the wedding.’

‘Very sad. Let that be. What did you bring for me?’ I ask her

‘Lots of laddoos and ariselu,’ she says.

‘Thank you. You are so sweet,’ I tell her.

‘I know,’ she says without modesty.

She peeps out of the window and says ‘nothing has changed.’

‘What do you expect to change in ten days,’ I ask her.

I turn to my daughter and ask,

‘What films did you see?’

‘Films? My foot. I call them trash,’ she says.

After half an hour run through scenes made stale by years of familiarity the taxi stops before our two-storied house. My wife and daughter pull out the bags from the trunk and go up to our second floor flat. Then a shouting match ensues on the road in front of the house between me and who else but the cabby. The cabby says he had quoted ninety. I say it was sixty.

‘Dad,’ my daughter yells from the terrace of the second floor.

’What?’ I shout back.

‘The house is burgled,’ she says.

That ends the run-in with the cabby. I pay him ninety and run upstairs. When I go up I find the front lock opening the door on to the terrace is broken. The lock of the flat on the terrace also met with a similar fate..  The neighbors lose no time to flock as if on cue to see the ruins. They talk about the spate of burglaries in the city of late.

‘I saw the fellow fixing the cylinder to the pillion of his bicycle with a discarded cycle tire. I thought he was a gas agency delivery boy come to deliver a refill and collect the empty shell,’ says the house owner.

‘You know what happened the other day? A well-dressed man called at my friend’s place telling him he represented a film distribution firm. He said there was a premiere of their recent film in Uphaar theatre and he had come to deliver complementary passes to my friend and his family. In the evening he drove a van into a lane next to my friend’s house and after making sure they had gone to the theater, emptied the entire house and drove away,’ says the first floor tenant.

A policeman from the Hauz Khas police station arrives. Obviously somebody called the police. The policeman and I begin to comb the house to check the extent of loss. Some coins of smaller denomination are missing from the small shrine in the kitchen. Some music tapes are also lifted. One of them is an album of post-Thyagaraja kritis. I heave a sigh of relief that the damage is negligible. Too soon. My daughter finds that the gas cylinder and its regulator have disappeared from the kitchen. The policeman writes down my complaint and reads it out to me, takes my signature on it and leaves.

My wife and I are relieved to know that nothing valuable was taken away. We remember we had no valuables with us and laughed at the burglar’s poor luck. What about making tea or cooking the night meal? When this question showed its face, I run to the colony market and bring an electric stove. This is no substitute for a cylinder and regulator though.

I visit our gas agency.  I explain to the man at the agency what had happened. The gasman says their business is to supply a cylinder if the customer has a permit from the Gas Authority of India. Next day I dash off to the GAI office. An official there tells without even looking at me that there is a long waiting list and my turn may come after two years. With the help of a newspaper friend I approach one of the big bosses at GAI.

‘Let him apply first,’ he says.

A fortnight after the burglary, a policeman calls at my place to say that the burglar has been arrested. They recovered 20 cylinders from him. Another journalist friend takes me to the police station and gets the station officer around to deliver a cylinder on the condition I’ll produce it as case property before the court whenever the case comes up for hearing. My neighbour helps me bring it home. But a cylinder without a regulator is of no use. The neighbor lays his hands on a used regulator paying the owner seventy-five rupees. The home fires begin burning again. My wife is the happiest.

Three months pass. A policeman climbs the two floors of our building. He presses the buzzer. I come out. The policeman says it is court summons to me to appear before the court with the case property. First the cylinder has to be carried down two floors from my flat. Earlier the gas agency man used to deliver a new refill and collect the empty cylinder. It must be ferried to the Patiala House courts. The court is on the second floor. If I don’t comply with the court call it will be contempt of the court.

I seek the help of my newspaper’s legal correspondent. He speaks to a lawyer at the Patiala House courts. The lawyer says,

‘let not your friend worry. I’ll take care of it..’

On the day of hearing, I meet the lawyer. The lawyer speaks to the magistrate. Luckily, the judge doesn’t insist on producing the case property. After several hearings, the public prosecutor informs the court that the accused has jumped bail. The court adjourns the case indefinitely. But the cylinder at my house continues to be court property.

During the respite the accused gifted me by jumping bail I retire from my job and shift to Hyderabad and out of the jurisdiction of the Delhi court. I’ve no clue about what happened to the case or the accused. Before leaving Delhi I surrendered the cylinder to the gas agency, obtained an acknowledgment of delivery. On the strength of this acknowledgment I get a new cylinder at Hyderabad. All is well that ends well.

__END__

Dasu Krishnamoorty