When I called in the cops

It was past midnight on Friday night (so technically it was Saturday morning) when the lights went out. It was pitch dark all around, though the streetlights were burning. There were no signs of the lights coming back on, so we decided to call it a night (later it would turn out that the problem was with our power connection which had tripped. so the power cut was only in our house).

Soon, we hear someone rattling our gate. To remind you, it is past 1 am now and pitch dark except for the street lights. The rattling goes on for another couple of minutes and some whistles are heard. Mom asks me to ignore it.

Ten minutes later, we hear a scooter stopping in front of our gate. The rattling resumes. We again put well left. Then we hear someone jump over the gates, and start knocking on the second level of grill doors. And they also start banging the walls. I continue to listen carefully. One guy is telling another (i’m translating it – it was in Kannada) “Saar, there was a thief upstairs saar. He had a torch saar. I’ve seen him with my own eyes. He even shone the torch straight on my face saar. I’m definite saar”.

And then we hear a loud voice in coarse Kannada, asking us to open the doors. I shout back this time, “why?”. The voice shouts back “there is a thief in your house. My men saw some torches”. It all seemed to fit in now. Everything fit in perfectly. All in place. Just like the ending of a Wodehouse novel. The voices we were hearing were those of cops. The guy who was shouting seemed to be an inspector. I took a deep breath and steadied myself. It was time for yet another speech.

(Once again I’m translating. And also elaborating for your sake). “Oh, that? Don’t bother about it. I had gone upstairs for some work, and had taken a torch along. Once the work was done, I decided to see what was around. And with a torch in hand it was only fair that i used it. And I shone it all around. Through all the open windows. And I saw happened to see your constables on the road. They looked up and saw me. There is no thief here, don’t worry”.

There were murmurs to be heard. The loud voice said “it was the owner only it seems. He had gone upstairs to the loo it seems. Let’s go”. There were more murmurs, mostly of discontent. What they thought was a fine catch of a thief was now history. And I woke up the next morning to discover that our power connection had tripped causing all the darkness.

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