Catch him if you can !
"malkolo bega ! kalla bandu ethkond hog bidtaane ilandre !"
(sleep soon, otherwise the thief's going to take you away !)
...the characteristic war-cry aunt used, to scare me when i was a kid, to put me to sleep...now now, i couldn't solve linear equations at the age of 6, but who's she kidding anyway!...i'd rather be awake while the thief's trying to steal me, than be a sleeping duck to make his job all the more easy !
...so while aunty's magic mantra used to work on normal kids my age, she'd hopelessly complain to my mother :
"aahahaha nin maga bangaaara !!!! kalla bartaane andre inna joraagi kann bitkondu eddidanae !" (oh what a son of gold! the mention of "thief" has made him all the more active!)
I've had quite a few brushes with thieves, and apparently, i noticed, not many were even remotely concerned about whether i slept well, or for that matter find any good use in taking me away if i didnt !...while the incurable liar that my aunt was, SHE was left petrified at the sight of him on quite a few occasions.
some of my earliest encounters with thieves have been rather disappointing....owing to a lot of construction work around my place, petty robberies were the norm of the day. people would come up with innovative ideas to trap the omnipresent thief, while robbers would come up with counter ideas to trick victims in turn. Once our neighbour got this brilliant idea of planting glass pieces on the free end of his 4 feet high compound wall, so that the robber would "bleed to death" while trying to cross it. pea-brain uncle would sharpen each glass piece on the wall with a chisel every weekend, visibly satisfied playing the "guardian" role!...no one in the layout wanted a robbery more than this dumbo, just so that he could test his wares ! after months of waiting, he gave up when his equally dumb kid mauled himself while trying to scale new heights with a "baby anju" long jump over the compound wall.
One guy thought it was a groundbreaking idea to place a few mouse traps near the gate, in the hope that the thief would step on it - a sorry version of land mines, if you like. i did hope that his oversize wife would step on it one day....alas he got wind of it and removed it in haste...
Washed clothes, hung up to dry, being robbed was a common occurance in the neighbourhood. Mother had come up with a brilliant idea against this by appointing me to guard it. awfully boring and time consuming this job, she had scared me into believing that if my school uniform shorts got robbed I'd be the one who'd be going to school without it !...the trick had to work !.
With a stick four times my height i'd sit there guarding the clothes. The stick, on the other hand, far from scaring the thief away, probably compelled him to steal it instead, so he could use it to pole vault high rise walls.
All these meeting with little or no success, neighbourhood boys now turned to the gorkha, by over-tipping him to do more rounds of the neighbourhood...for once, this worked, and peace reigned for sometime.
..until the thief struck again...this time sweeping off stereos from cars in the neighbourhood. This was about 10 years ago...Getting up early in the morning, i saw the car's rear glass neatly removed and placed on the bonnet, while the left door was ajar. at first glance, i thought my father's obsession with cleaning the car had reached new heights, only to see a police sniffer dog peeing near the pole outside with a burly cop next to him.
"en saaar nim manelu kalthaana aitha ?" ( has there been a robbery at ur house too ?)..the cop questioned.
"ah!!! ....oh !!!!" (...the realization dawning on me!)
after filing an FIR, and taking my statement, the cop advised me,
"next time crime scene hatra hogi hand print bidbedi !" ( dont leave your hand prints on the crime scene the next time !)....
...and i was like, "you moron, you expect another robbery or what !".
...with insurance paying up for the stale stolen stereo, it was a good deal actually.
vigil increased again in the neighbourhood...the gorkha was getting richer by the day....the elusive thief never returned....
....until about 4 years ago, when one thief caught the fancy of our tenants shoes. The first time he siphoned of two pairs of his shoes, our tenant boy had no idea what had happened, concluding that it was the temple where he had actually forgotten them!
Exactly after 2 months, the prompt thief showed up again( as though that is time he gave the victim to buy himself a few pairs), and this time walked away with another pair, just two months old. The feverish pace at which the thief was working, one would think he had a deadline to complete!
If there is one profession where one should NOT be on time, robbery definitely is one. Very sure that the thief would turn up in the next two months, night vigil was on the cards., and there i was manning our house gate albeit at a safe distance, within the comforts of the house, and watching out for the unknown to materialize.
Surely enough he came.
The clock struck 2am, when a sudden thud jolted me out of my slumber. Immediately running towards the door, i peeped outside the window to check what had happened. The thief, had done a good job of stealing the shoes, but had tripped while trying to scale the compound wall.
"kaLLa kaLLa...appaji kaLLa bandidane !!!" ( thief ! thief ! dad, the thief's here !)....i had latched the doors so tight, i could hardly turn them with my shivering hands.
"kalla kalla antha maney olgaade kuthkondre sigtaaneno goobe !" (will you be able to catch the thief, if you shout sitting inside the house , you owl ?)
now, now this is no way to thank the guard !...a classic case of shooting the messenger !
Father was quick, and he opened the door, while i tried hard to look at the direction in which the thief ran...
"neen eekaade hogu, naanu aakade hogtini....kalla madhyadalli sikakothaane" ( you go right, and i'll go left, we'll catch him on the other side of the block!)..my father ordered.
with little or no experience in catching a thief, and elementary skills in self defence, i'd be safe trying to catch him, than actually catch him, i contemplated. That way i'd dry him out, and then deal with him better. I ran towards my right, shouting as loud as i could, more out of fear....
The limping thief, a skinny torched bloke in his late 20s, with a pair of shoes hanging around his neck, scampered off even faster at the sight of me. His fear was a saving grace, for if he had shown even an ounce of resistance to my chase, the whole scene would have been completely different, with him chasing me, and my father chasing the both of us !
Such was my conscious effort to chase him but not catch him, that if he had ever decided to stop for a sec, he'd be shocked to see that i would have had done the same too. i could see my father on the other side of the block, running hand in hand occasionally appearing and disappearing behind the houses. The thief took a swift right turn, to run right in the direction where my father would be waiting to pounce on him.
However, the sudden ruckus created by my shouts disturbed the street dogs, which apparantly took offense of this, and started chasing me instead. i never approved of street dogs as security guards, and this time i ran vindicated !...taking this opportunity, the thief ran into the neighbourhood park throwing the shoe away, leaving me helpless with the street dogs, while i ran around to collect a few stones to chase them away.
2 seconds later.....THUD !!...one tight blow on my head...turning back, i saw my father, red with anger,
"ello kaLLa ??? kathe !!!" (WHERE's the thief ??? you donkey !!!)...
muffled words, came out.....'hidiri nodona!' ('catch him if you can!')
(sleep soon, otherwise the thief's going to take you away !)
...the characteristic war-cry aunt used, to scare me when i was a kid, to put me to sleep...now now, i couldn't solve linear equations at the age of 6, but who's she kidding anyway!...i'd rather be awake while the thief's trying to steal me, than be a sleeping duck to make his job all the more easy !
...so while aunty's magic mantra used to work on normal kids my age, she'd hopelessly complain to my mother :
"aahahaha nin maga bangaaara !!!! kalla bartaane andre inna joraagi kann bitkondu eddidanae !" (oh what a son of gold! the mention of "thief" has made him all the more active!)
I've had quite a few brushes with thieves, and apparently, i noticed, not many were even remotely concerned about whether i slept well, or for that matter find any good use in taking me away if i didnt !...while the incurable liar that my aunt was, SHE was left petrified at the sight of him on quite a few occasions.
some of my earliest encounters with thieves have been rather disappointing....owing to a lot of construction work around my place, petty robberies were the norm of the day. people would come up with innovative ideas to trap the omnipresent thief, while robbers would come up with counter ideas to trick victims in turn. Once our neighbour got this brilliant idea of planting glass pieces on the free end of his 4 feet high compound wall, so that the robber would "bleed to death" while trying to cross it. pea-brain uncle would sharpen each glass piece on the wall with a chisel every weekend, visibly satisfied playing the "guardian" role!...no one in the layout wanted a robbery more than this dumbo, just so that he could test his wares ! after months of waiting, he gave up when his equally dumb kid mauled himself while trying to scale new heights with a "baby anju" long jump over the compound wall.
One guy thought it was a groundbreaking idea to place a few mouse traps near the gate, in the hope that the thief would step on it - a sorry version of land mines, if you like. i did hope that his oversize wife would step on it one day....alas he got wind of it and removed it in haste...
Washed clothes, hung up to dry, being robbed was a common occurance in the neighbourhood. Mother had come up with a brilliant idea against this by appointing me to guard it. awfully boring and time consuming this job, she had scared me into believing that if my school uniform shorts got robbed I'd be the one who'd be going to school without it !...the trick had to work !.
With a stick four times my height i'd sit there guarding the clothes. The stick, on the other hand, far from scaring the thief away, probably compelled him to steal it instead, so he could use it to pole vault high rise walls.
All these meeting with little or no success, neighbourhood boys now turned to the gorkha, by over-tipping him to do more rounds of the neighbourhood...for once, this worked, and peace reigned for sometime.
..until the thief struck again...this time sweeping off stereos from cars in the neighbourhood. This was about 10 years ago...Getting up early in the morning, i saw the car's rear glass neatly removed and placed on the bonnet, while the left door was ajar. at first glance, i thought my father's obsession with cleaning the car had reached new heights, only to see a police sniffer dog peeing near the pole outside with a burly cop next to him.
"en saaar nim manelu kalthaana aitha ?" ( has there been a robbery at ur house too ?)..the cop questioned.
"ah!!! ....oh !!!!" (...the realization dawning on me!)
after filing an FIR, and taking my statement, the cop advised me,
"next time crime scene hatra hogi hand print bidbedi !" ( dont leave your hand prints on the crime scene the next time !)....
...and i was like, "you moron, you expect another robbery or what !".
...with insurance paying up for the stale stolen stereo, it was a good deal actually.
vigil increased again in the neighbourhood...the gorkha was getting richer by the day....the elusive thief never returned....
....until about 4 years ago, when one thief caught the fancy of our tenants shoes. The first time he siphoned of two pairs of his shoes, our tenant boy had no idea what had happened, concluding that it was the temple where he had actually forgotten them!
Exactly after 2 months, the prompt thief showed up again( as though that is time he gave the victim to buy himself a few pairs), and this time walked away with another pair, just two months old. The feverish pace at which the thief was working, one would think he had a deadline to complete!
If there is one profession where one should NOT be on time, robbery definitely is one. Very sure that the thief would turn up in the next two months, night vigil was on the cards., and there i was manning our house gate albeit at a safe distance, within the comforts of the house, and watching out for the unknown to materialize.
Surely enough he came.
The clock struck 2am, when a sudden thud jolted me out of my slumber. Immediately running towards the door, i peeped outside the window to check what had happened. The thief, had done a good job of stealing the shoes, but had tripped while trying to scale the compound wall.
"kaLLa kaLLa...appaji kaLLa bandidane !!!" ( thief ! thief ! dad, the thief's here !)....i had latched the doors so tight, i could hardly turn them with my shivering hands.
"kalla kalla antha maney olgaade kuthkondre sigtaaneno goobe !" (will you be able to catch the thief, if you shout sitting inside the house , you owl ?)
now, now this is no way to thank the guard !...a classic case of shooting the messenger !
Father was quick, and he opened the door, while i tried hard to look at the direction in which the thief ran...
"neen eekaade hogu, naanu aakade hogtini....kalla madhyadalli sikakothaane" ( you go right, and i'll go left, we'll catch him on the other side of the block!)..my father ordered.
with little or no experience in catching a thief, and elementary skills in self defence, i'd be safe trying to catch him, than actually catch him, i contemplated. That way i'd dry him out, and then deal with him better. I ran towards my right, shouting as loud as i could, more out of fear....
The limping thief, a skinny torched bloke in his late 20s, with a pair of shoes hanging around his neck, scampered off even faster at the sight of me. His fear was a saving grace, for if he had shown even an ounce of resistance to my chase, the whole scene would have been completely different, with him chasing me, and my father chasing the both of us !
Such was my conscious effort to chase him but not catch him, that if he had ever decided to stop for a sec, he'd be shocked to see that i would have had done the same too. i could see my father on the other side of the block, running hand in hand occasionally appearing and disappearing behind the houses. The thief took a swift right turn, to run right in the direction where my father would be waiting to pounce on him.
However, the sudden ruckus created by my shouts disturbed the street dogs, which apparantly took offense of this, and started chasing me instead. i never approved of street dogs as security guards, and this time i ran vindicated !...taking this opportunity, the thief ran into the neighbourhood park throwing the shoe away, leaving me helpless with the street dogs, while i ran around to collect a few stones to chase them away.
2 seconds later.....THUD !!...one tight blow on my head...turning back, i saw my father, red with anger,
"ello kaLLa ??? kathe !!!" (WHERE's the thief ??? you donkey !!!)...
muffled words, came out.....'hidiri nodona!' ('catch him if you can!')
posted by Jagadish at 12:01 PM
30 comments
