by G. Sampath
2
To
The SHO, B— Police Station,
Delhi
Respected Sir,
I, Ms KL, would hereby like to report the theft of my Apple MacBook OxyAir (silver colour), Apple iPad 9 (silver colour, with a black leather case), and Apple iPhone 9S (white, with white metal case) on Monday 18 April 2020, from my residence, Apartment No. 142, B— Co-operative Housing Society [postal address with PIN].
At 4.45 p.m., I left my apartment, bolting the outer mesh door and the inner teak one, and went down to the presswala located within the Society premises to collect some items of clothing given for press that morning by my husband, Mr AK. I collected the clothes and returned to my apartment by 5 p.m. and found both the doors shut but the latch on the outer door open. When I went in I found that my gadgets listed above, which I had left on the dining table in the living room, were missing. No other items from the house are missing.
These three items contain a vast amount of information and data vital to my professional and personal life, including bank passwords, confidential client information, confidential emails, all the details of my official and personal contacts, private personal photographs and videos, including photographs and videos of a prurient nature that, if leaked online, could cause me shame and embarrassment of mammoth proportions, besides several hundred life-critical files and documents, etc., all of which are currently inaccessible to me, and whose loss has already subjected me to unimaginable inconvenience and left me in a state of mental shock. I hereby request that this theft be immediately investigated, my stolen goods recovered, and the culprits apprehended.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
KL
3
Cop: Madam, it is difficult to operate without laptop and phone these days, we know that. But if you don’t mind my asking, why didn’t you lock your door before leaving? Even children know to do this – this is Delhi – saala, everyone is a thief, don’t you know that?
KL: Sir, I already explained to your colleague (nodding at the other cop seated at an adjoining desk), I was in a hurry, I thought it was only a matter of five–ten minutes.
Cop: Five–ten minutes? You were away for fifteen minutes – you left at 4.45 and came back at 5 p.m.
KL: Yes, sir, I thought it would take ten minutes – and that’s the maximum it would take anyone – you don’t have to take my word for it, you can have it timed yourself—
Cop: Arrey, madam, we just want to make sure the facts are set down correctly, you know … But why you took fifteen minutes, not ten?
KL: I was coming to that. The presswala did not have change for fifty. I waited for him to get change. On my way back I met the carpenter. We had a brief chat. I told him about a job I wanted done. He said he’d come by in half an hour. I had to convince him to come the next day. All this added extra minutes.
Cop: Is there anybody you suspect?
KL (shrugs): I’m not sure, you can begin by questioning the guards…
Cop: Madam, don’t tell us what to do, that’s our job.
KL: Inspector-saheb, I wasn’t telling you what to do—
Cop: Just answer what I’m asking you—
KL: You asked me who you should question.
Cop: No, I asked if you suspected anyone.
KL: I don’t know… If I say it’s for you to come up with a list of suspects, you’ll accuse me of telling you how to do your job.
Cop: Madam, nobody is accusing you of anything, as yet.
KL: Not sure I understand. What do you mean ‘as yet’?
Cop: Are you sure you’ve not – eh – forgotten to tell us something?
KL: What makes you think I haven’t told you everything?
Cop (shrugs): I’ve been a cop for twenty years. Don’t take this the wrong way, madam, but my instincts are never wrong.
KL(sighs): When will somebody come to the Society and start the investigation?
Cop: Soon, soon. But as you can see (waves his arm around), nobody is free. Everyone is on the field. You may be reading in the papers every day, madam. Crime is a flourishing business. We are badly understaffed. Too many cases, no manpower. Look at the files over there. And here. And we also have to document everything and do data entry for website so that people like you can track everything. The mediawale make it worse, blowing up every small thing into a big thing. But God willing, we’ll find your laptop and phone. As soon as two–three constables are free, we’ll send them, okay?
KL: I would appreciate it if you can treat this case on priority, sir.
Cop (narrowing his eyes): Have you tried calling your number?
KL: Yes, it’s switched off.
Cop: I’m sure it is.
KL: Can you tell me when somebody will be free to start on this case?
Cop: Soon, soon – now, if you don’t mind, wait outside, please, there are others like you with even more serious cases.
KL: Sir, I’m here because a crime has been committed. As a government servant, it is your duty to—
Cop (looks offended): Tell me, madam, you are a working woman, if you have ten projects to complete, will you do all ten at the same time or will you prioritize?
KL: So my case is not a priority for you?
Cop: Did I say that?
KL: Then what am I supposed to understand?
Cop: Try to see it from my point of view. Put yourself in my shoes. If you were me, you would want me to run after murderers and rapists and kidnappers and extortionists first, or put all that aside and go after some missing gadgets?
KL: So mine is a minor case, according to you? The total value of the goods stolen from me is more than a couple of lakhs. This is minor?
Cop (sighs): What to tell you, madam. Please wait outside.
4
‘No I can’t wash it and use it.’
The creative consultant was in the couch sipping earl grey. Her hair was uncombed. Her face was dull as a fogged-up bathroom mirror. Her legs had begun sprouting bristles. Her brows reminded her husband of an overused toothbrush. Loose skin hung from her arms like weighted membranes.
‘But you can’t,’ said the Executive Coach, folding the newspaper into half, ‘be mourning your laptop forever.’
Actually, the cop was right, the wife thought. She shouldn’t have left the flat unlocked for five minutes, let alone fifteen. But who could have known it would turn a thoroughfare from 4.45 to 5, and on this particular day? And why this kind of targeted, almost vindictive vandalism? Was it possible she had enemies she didn’t know about? That this enemy had been watching and waiting for an opportunity? Should she tell the cops about the teenager from the second floor she caught boozing on the terrace with his buddies and who, in all probability, hated her for outing him to his father? Or her maid whose salary she had cut for two consecutive months for having taken more than her allotted leave of four days in a month, and who had, now that she thought about it, turned up half hour late that day for no discernible reason? Or could it be the mason – or any of his helpers – working in the flat on the first floor she had yelled at for blocking the passageway with cement and mud? But even with all their grievances, they would have to be mentally sick, really, really sick, to pull off something like this. This was in a whole new league. No way she could go to the cops with the real story. They would have a big laugh at her expense and ask her to move on.
She ought to either come clean or put the whole thing behind her. She could do neither. How could she move on unless the culprit was caught and punished? Until she found out who did it? But how could the cops do their job without knowing the full story? What if the most revealing clue was in what she’d left out?
‘It isn’t only about the laptop or phone or iPad,’ she said, taking another sip of the by now extremely lukewarm tea. ‘Why do you keep pretending it’s only that?’
The Executive Coach found his wife to be the most uncoachable of anybody he’s ever had to coach. Unfortunately she was the only person in
the world whom he could not charge with being ‘uncoachable’, a standard tactic he deployed in his workshops to break down the resistance of stubborn or smart-alecky subjects.
‘What do you want to do, then?’ he said. ‘Just sit around in your pyjamas moping around because some jerk played a mean prank on you?’
The wife leaned sideways on the couch, extended her left leg and tucked in her right. She brought the cup to her lips in silence, her gaze fixed on a bare nail in the wall above her husband’s head.
Outside, it was another grey Friday morning. A squirrel paused on the balcony parapet, turned, and stared at the wife, its tail a frozen whiplash. A spider shivered in its hammock above the armchair where the husband sat, broadsheet in hand, scanning the news absentmindedly. At that very moment, in Brisbane, India was losing another Test match by an innings and 200-plus runs. Across the seas, in another continent, a fourteen-year-old from the XX tribe was being violated by ferocious militiamen of the YY tribe in a civil conflict in a country famous for civil conflict in a region famous for civil conflict. Across the seas, in another continent, a Hollywood celeb was getting divorced while another was getting married while a third one was having a baby while a fourth one had gotten a fourth nose job in three years.
Across space in another galaxy, on planet Astra241, an advanced civilization of hyperintelligent haemorrhoids that do not live in bodies and do not need signs to communicate with each other discovered life on a planet several thousand light years away. Back on the planet just discovered by the advanced civilization of hyperintelligent haemorrhoids of Astra 241, a thermonuclear device exploded deep in the Atlantic Ocean, generating explosive submarine laughter whose most powerful notes shoot waves 8 km into the troposphere. The last representative of a species of glowworm burned out at the precise moment the creative consultant finished the last drop of her earl grey and set the cup on the mantel. In the meantime, tears were being produced in ducts across the world and sent to government-recognized tear-processing plants for desalination and export to countries that import drinking water. In the wastelands of Gurgaon, a group of drunken predator drones waylaid and raped a customer service drone on its way to work. And in living rooms and bedrooms and bathrooms around the world, people touched screens and pressed remotes and waited for their wishes to be processed.
The wife mobilised herself from the couch, proceeded to the dining table, covered in three layers of heavy plastic sheets and, using all the strength of her upper body and arms, overturned it.
‘I want this thing out of the house.’
‘Okay,’ said the husband.
‘Also those three things.’
‘Okay.’
‘Also you.’
‘Okay.’
6
It was I who did it.
It was inevitable given what she had put me through.
When a citizen of HAIR meets another HAIR citizen abroad, basic courtesy demands that you acknowledge the other with a greeting or a smile or a nod and if you cannot take the initiative, at least acknowledge the other’s acknowledgement of you with a return greeting or return smile or return nod – not much of an ask, is it? But this woman, who was not only from my country and city and caste but was actually from the very same Society in which I lived, passed the same security guards on her way to work every day, ordered groceries from the same Big Bazaar that I did, got power from the same discom as I did, yet never deigned to exchange a token smile or nod or greeting, evidently thought I was beneath acknowledgement even in a foreign locale.
We were in two parallel bubble elevators on the AWE tower in Mogadishu, she on her way up and I on my way down, when our eyes met. I gave her a polite and yet warm smile. Instead of returning my smile, as any decent sapien would have, she looked right through me. Not only did she look right through me – that too in front of several other tourists and locals who were amused witnesses to the incident – the very next day, at the cash counter of a duty-free at the Aden Adde, she smiled warmly, almost beatifically, at a complete stranger (a not bad-looking Caucasian male, if you must know), when he had only given her a casual nod and flexed his mouth in a rather loose approximation of a smile, compared to the clearly defined heart-warming smile I had offered her from the bubble elevator on the AWE tower.
As you may have guessed by now, I’m a little sensitive about people not treating me with respect because unlike most people you see on the street and smile at or do not smile at, I don’t have a colon. I had it removed when my cancer of the colon was starting to colonize other parts of my body.
I had a choice to make. Either I die protecting my dignity or I live and carry my shit around outside my body, unlike most people who hide it inside theirs and pretend they aren’t full of any shit at all. I chose to live, to live protecting my dignity, to fight for it when it’s attacked, to avenge it when it’s snatched away.
So yes, I carry my shit outside the body. A tube connects my large intestine directly to this plastic bag which, when it gets full, I empty into the toilet.
Initially, I admit, it was exciting to see your own shit in the process of its formation and accumulation. Then the excitement wears off. And normal colonized people start avoiding you. The worst thing is when they see the bag and assume there is a smell when the bag is actually odour-proof and seals the smell inside more effectively than the natural shit holders inside their body ever could and which, on the contrary, announce the presence of the shit inside them from time to time through gaseous signals.
The irony is that I have a legitimate cause to feel superior because unlike normal people, I never fart. I cannot. But everyone needs defense mechanisms – even the peaceable cow has horns, the donkey has a kick, the toad, which is pretty low down the food chain, has poison glands in its eyes. I too have turned weakness into weapon.
Some four months into my new life as a decolonized person, I snipped off the tip of my plastic bag to create a small opening and fitted it with a dropper. All I had to do was tilt the bag and squeeze and I could decorate anything I want.
I began with the basin of the toilet, for obvious reasons – it afforded privacy, and cleaning up only meant pressing the flush. After three months of daily two-hour practice – you will understand that my practice was limited by the quantum of material my body was producing – I had mastered twenty different henna patterns, with images of birds, flowers, animals, scenes of pastoral life, and letters of the Malayalam alphabet.
When I was good enough, and confident enough about being good enough, I began to do car bonnets at night. Nothing spectacular, just simple messages: ‘Speed thrills, but shit smells’, ‘Your car does this to the environment’, ‘What you are when you bully cyclists’, etc. But I stopped after a while because the dogs were too much trouble. They probably thought I was marking my territory or something. Barked their asses off, making me hurry. All my life I’ve had this problem where my handwriting goes for a six when I hurry. Bonnet graffiti was no exception.
I began to practise my art on the sly. In the subway. On park benches post-midnight. On the gates and porches of those who don’t pick up after their pets. It was around this time that I was invited as a special guest to the inauguration of the AWE tower in Mogadishu, where this woman’s unprovoked insult of me took place.
She had been on my list for a while. I was biding my time. I tried getting close to her car but there was a path lab on the ground floor of their building, and human traffic was high, with people parking or backing out all the time. I never got the privacy I needed. My options were also limited because she was a woman and I’m a firm believer in women’s rights. I didn’t want to do something assholish, like fling acid or something, which is a cheap, cruel and horrible way to take revenge. I’m not a cheap, cruel or horrible person.
But I wasn’t prepared to let go either. I cannot accept that someone can insult a decolonized cancer survivor and get away with it.
And then, one Saturday evening, my patience paid off. I was on the ter
race of my apartment building, smoking my late afternoon smoke, and who do I see but this woman coming out of her block. We lived in different slices of the condominial loaf but the crust of terrace was contiguous. On a hunch, I scaled the waist-high parapets, crossed over to her block on the roof and took the stairs down to her floor.
My hunch proved right. The woman hadn’t even bothered to secure the door. It was bolted but not locked. Such arrogance. The latch was sticking up instead of being flat against the door, beseeching passers-by to trespass. The other doors on the floor were shut. No one was around. I undid the latch. It was smooth and soundless, unlike mine which was hard, raspy and responded only to the application of brute force.
I pushed the door open, stepped in, and the first thing I saw was the dining table with the laptop, iPad, iPhone on it.
I didn’t waste time. I squeezed out ‘You’ on her phone, ‘Are’ on her tablet, and ‘Full of shit’ on the keyboard of her laptop, I think it was a MacBook. Then I added, on the dining table, ‘Eat this’. That was all.
I quietly made my way out, shut the door behind me, climbed the stairs to the terrace, and back to my block. I was in and out in four minutes. I was that good. Had there been a cake – I did check their fridge – I would have done ‘Happy Birthday’ on it.
The police arrived two days later. A crowd gathered to watch them grill the guards at the gate. She was there with the cops, butting in with questions of her own. I was there too, for this was the fun part. From their questions it was clear she had lied to them. She knew the cops would turn it into a joke if she told them the facts.
She couldn’t imagine washing her phone and using it again. In her position I certainly would have – the latest models are washable is what I hear. But she wants the cops to nab the intruder so she can charge him with theft.
Well, they will never find him. I guarantee that. A crime was committed. And fit punishment dispensed. That’s all that happened. I can give that in writing, to whomsoever is interested. And forward-thinking, and open-minded.