Lockdown journal-16.04.2020: A tale of two thieves

It is being reported that novel coronavirus outbreak and lockdown have brought the crime graph down across the world, including in Delhi. A friend, however, came to know of an incident of alleged theft in a locality in the capital yesterday. The guy apparently decamped with a bedsheet, a matress and some amount of atta.

"May be a homeless man who needed food and a bed, not a professional thief," my friend said, setting my train of thought back to one afternoon years ago when a thief struck at my home.

I was working in the desk of the news agency I was employed with at that time when my then landlady, who could never pronounce my name and preferred to address me by the name of my ex-roommate, called on my mobile, "beta Sheelpa, aapke ghar abhi chor ghus aya tha, jaldi aajao, dekh lo kya kya gaya". Being naturally over-reactive, I started shaking and sweating and ran to one of the bosses. He said, "but how can you can go home now, there are so many stories!" My heart was saying "your stories can go to hell", but the head did a bit of pleading and I rushed to my flat with the help of a kind car-owning colleague.

Everything was in place, except the locks and my wristwatch which I had forgotten to wear to office that day. "How come he didn't take anything else?" I was surprised. My gold earrings were lying untouched in my table drawer. "Maybe he was a drug addict and in a hurry," the colleague said.

We went to the local thana to lodge a complaint. After hearing my story, the duty officer said, "oh, it must be the same man who was caught stealing a little while ago at a house in the same area. Some people have beaten him up badly and left him here, just a few minutes back."

He took us to another room to show us a badly battered body lying on the floor. I don't remember anything else, just that at that moment I lost all desire to lodge an FIR over a wristwatch. I went home.

A few years after that, at another rented house, I returned after office one day to find the latch broken and every one of my hundreds of books spread all around, lying like the dead in the epic battle of Kurukshetra. It appeared that the guy spent at least an hour inside looking for cash, but couldn't find any money. Even my chequebook was in office. This time I had lodged a complaint, over theft of a pair of sneakers and a wristwatch (again!).

In short, the tales of thieves who broke into my homes did not have happy endings for them. Maybe, next time they will strike  "gold"! Of course, for that I will have to purchase it first.