For once, there is so much I want to write about ! Last week has been extremely eventful and despite having a lot of stories to share, I unfortunately, ran out of time. I have lined up the eventful summary today which will be uploaded on the fly so I am looking forward to exhausting the built up steam of words.
It started on Friday. I love technology. I understand that may not be a big surprise considering almost half the world’s population consider themselves in the same category. I have insisted on having Google+ location sharing enabled on all of my family’s devices. So it means that, when I want to tell my other half to meet me somewhere, I just have to tell her to activate her phone’s GPS and take any road in the rickshaw towards my pretty photo. (on a side note, I am pretty frightening to look at, so much so that police stations prefer to use it as a mugshot while interrogating innocent witnesses. Anyway, point is Google+ does something incredible to profile pictures so it is weird to see a pleasantly smart photo my myself dancing around on the Pune map in that app.) IT saves me the hassle of listening to absolutely accurate descriptions of her location which make it seem like she is Anne Hathaway flying around alone in an Interstellar spaceship (movie review to follow).
So I get her call informing me she is off work and has started her journey, I pack my bag and slowly walk down to the car, sit in and pull out the phone to see her location. I am waiting for her photo to move past the Sancheti Hospital signal so that I can move out to pick her up from JM Road. 15 minutes or 15 days later, her location abruptly changes to indicate she is somewhere around the Shivajinagar Bus depot. This isn’t surprising as I am now quite comfortable in being uninformed about any changes in our meeting point location over the last decade with her so I start thinking of all the plans she may have lined up for us in the evening. A movie probably, dine out with one of her friends, coffee with one of her friend’s friend, dinner with her uncle’s neighbour’s dog’s best mate’s maid’s sister’s aunt’s granny.
I still am unsure why that would involve travelling to the Shivajinagar Bus Depot though. I sure as hell love taking government transport. What’s not to like? It is a full body massage in a vibrating red hot metal cage. Scratch that. It is worse than bondage, I guess, shockingly reminiscing everything I have witnessed from far in Amsterdam, a quiet van der sex abode at that ! Hell there is no place I would want to travel in a bus then. What the hell is she upto?
I get a call, from an unknown number. Its her. She is screaming at the top of her voice and I have almost dropped a deuce in my pants for fear she might have beaten the crap out of someone for spitting on the roads in traffic. Something like that. After a few seconds of incoherent shouting, I gather she dropped her phone which was safely kept in her lunch box bag which fell off on the road without her realizing. Didn’t foresee that one.
Now in today’s world, a person’s mobile phone is not only a communication device, but it is like an inseparable limb, carrying private information, both personal and business. It would be silly to put value on it. So when your lunch bag, falls off while travelling without you realizing, the fact that you also had your mobile phone in the same bag is enough to cause a heart attack when you reach your destination. She was experiencing something similar, and India being an honest country, she clearly had hopes from her people, errr.
I tell her that the phone’s location suggests its at the bus depot which means that someone had picked up her bag and since the phone hadn’t been turned off yet, they might be handing it over to lost and found. “But then they are not answering my calls Tanmay !!! I am telling you it’s being stolen !”. We didn’t really have an alternative but to keep trying her phone and reach the depot as soon as possible hoping they didn’t switch off the phone, were not robbers, were not her pranking office colleagues either as they would have been eaten alive by this wild woman.
I started the car and my GPS in equal measure and put my Kimi Raikonnen face on, drove to the depot like the slow safe driver that I am. I stopped at all the signals, did not drive over pest-y pedestrians, did not honk everyone’s ears off, and did not abuse anyone either. Got a red carpet waiting for me at the heaven’s gate for sure. I almost did not drive over the parking attendant at the Shivajinagar Railway station which is right adjacent to this bus stop. Annoyed at how 4 wheeler parking spaces are designed assuming everyone drives around in a small wheelchair with a steering wheel, a few expletives later I wedged my way in to a spot as big as someone’s butt crack. I then tried to exhale as much fat as possible along with the last bit of unnecessary air out of my massive body and squeezed myself out through the tiny slit of the open car door. Feeling pretty happy with what I had achieved so far, I wished to call it a good night but I had a wild missus at large. And her phone yes.
I get another call, a few more screams later I understand that she found a police constable on the street and explained him the problem. She also tells me that after trying her phone for more than 20 times, someone picked it up but did not speak, and so, she screamed her lungs out at him and scared the shit out of him by telling him that she knew where he was standing and that she was with a policeman. She shoved her phone in the police constables face and asked him to “sweet talk” the guy into basically shitting his pants and not moving an inch even if a rabid dog bit him. The constable also took the fellows name and details. He was kind enough to accompany her to the bus depot to meet this person first hand and help my wife get her phone back.
She clearly did not tell me all of this. All she said was that they spoke with the person and his name was Chandrakant and he was standing outside the depot entrance. Call cut.
So pretty little Mr. Husband deems it fit to start staring at all the random men standing outside the depot. I walk past the chaiwala and give him a physical. I half resist the urge to start checking each one’s pockets. I walk to a guy who looks like he is waiting for a spaceship for the last 30 years and ask him if his name is Chandrakant. Quite offended, he says no. I then do that stupid thing of asking him if he knows a Chandrakant. Yes Tanmay, everyone knows everyone else at a State Transport Bus Depot. Biting my tongue, I am contemplating if I should shout his name out loud, but such melodramatics might result in me being shortlisted for an Ekta Kapoor soap audition and I resist. I stare at my phone and Google+ shows my location same as my wife’s. So where the hell is this guy?
I hear my name being screamed in the exact fashion I was dreading and yes it is the misus. She does the slo-mo run and comes to me and tells me we need to go to a restaurant opposite the depot. All eyes are on us as we both do the slo-mo run. The police constable is already there. By the time we reach there, the constable has taken the phone and the bag from the fellow who he thanks. My wife had relief written all over my face. He wasn’t the thief we were imagining but quite why he did not pick up our earlier calls is unknown. The police constable is Mr. Arun Chavhan, HQ Mukhyalaya, who we are indebted to, for without his sincere efforts, we wouldn’t have our phone today.
A phone is a place where one finds peace and sanctity in life and is a window to his or her world. It contains the last few pictures of loved ones you have recently lost and the contact numbers you haven’t stored elsewhere of distant relatives in far off lands. Quite simple, a phone, whatever its materialistic value, is emotionally priceless. What is even more priceless is coming across a selfless hard working police constable who is ex-army, who had the kindness and awareness to help a woman haplessly running around on the Shivajinagar streets trying to locate her phone in the dark. We clearly cannot thank him enough for going out of his way to help us unite with our closest memories. Thank you Mr. Chavhan.
In hindsight, the missus has been complaining about how slow her phone has become and how she needs to migrate to a newer sexier model. Well she has been kissing her old phone repeatedly the whole of yesterday. Bless you Mr. Chavhan for saving us some money.
mrtanmay.com 