Right, let’s have another laugh at my expense. T’was a very
hot Hyderabad
summer’s day. We were setting out to meet best friends from Mumbai and Hyderabad not met for many
years, in an attempt to relive some fun moments of the past. Going out in the
midday sun is what Englishmen and mad dogs do but we aren’t Englishmen, and we
aren’t dogs, but mad is an adjective that can be applied to us. Err…especially
me? I lock the door, start the car and halfway ask the daughter, “Where are the
house keys?” She informs me that she doesn’t see the keys in my bag, or in the
car.
Panic sets in as I have more than once left the keys dangling
in the door and my friendly indispensable neighbour has made it her business to
take care of this frailty of mine but the problem is that she’s out of town on
vacation! So I make an about turn and rush back home and almost simultaneously
the phone rings, and guess what? We can’t find the phone, but we can hear it.
Now for a bit of an aside: Since I traded in the beloved iSmash for a snazzier phone, I have not
been able to recognize its ringtone, or find the contacts let alone check my Gmail
from the phone. In fact, once a colleague was calling me several times over and
I kept wondering why the person in the TV serial that I was watching was not
picking up the phone – till the daughter pointed out that it was my new phone
that was ringing. Sigh! How I miss my iSmash!
Anyway, my child who feels that I share the memory of Jason Bourne which
obviously is not saying much about my retention capabilities, decided to
customize the theme of the Bourne Identity as my ring tone.
So imagine my surprise when I stop the car and have Moby’s Extreme Ways play out from underneath!
Talk about music from the depths! That’s when I realized that I was somehow
sitting on the phone and the keys!! Obviously, I have hit rock bottom in more
ways than one. What was even weirder was the missed call on the phone showed as
“Home”. Hello- if both of us were in the car, and I had the keys underneath me,
then who was calling from home? So we continued back, and this time Ayesha
decided to open the door, check the house, lock it and bring back the keys to
the car. I also, by then managed to check on the phone that the missed call
from “Home” was from some days ago ( err…most likely on an occasion when I
could not find my cellphone and had to call from the landline to locate it. Once I even had a colleague call till I finally found it left as a bookmark in a book that had been returned to the shelf. That's yet another aside)
We decided to leave the keys in the car and proceed for tea
with friends. And we locked the car. We are sure of that because we tried the
doors before we went in. After an evening of tulsi chai, apple and walnut pies,
mangoes and vadas, (and more vadas in my case) we set back home after dropping
off Mumbai friends and when we reached, we could not find the keys. Kid
insisted I had it, and I insisted that she had it. The car did not seem to have
it. The bag did not have it. It wasn’t anywhere. And as I said the indispensable
neighbour with the second key was on holiday. The kid’s extra key was in her
school bag locked up inside.
The keys had just disappeared along with the keychain which
was an ornate filigree ornament from my eastern hometown that zamindarnis of yore
stuck in their hips or tied to the end of their saris. Together the key and the
chain would be impossible not to spot, but we just could not spot it. In the
course of the search we cleaned up the car, tore up the lining of my mirror
work jhola, checked our pockets and retraced our steps again and again. The Hyderabad friend set out
to search her home, and the car park. The Mumbai friend had to check her bags.
The watchman searched the car. The builder of the apartment complex, who was
out on his evening smoke, puffed his way through the car with a searchlight.
The keys were gone, and we were locked out completely.
By that time, daughter’s midget cricket gang had gathered
around as they found our adventure way more entertaining and each of them had a
suggestion – none of which were practical, doable, or remotely connected with
reality. Then Puff the Big Builder asked Ayesha if she had bolted the balcony
doors? She sheepishly admitted that she might not have locked it properly i.e
turned the bolts to the side. The midgets got the adventure they wanted when a heavy
duty metal step stool was hauled under the balcony. The watchman then used it
to jump up and rock-climb his way into the kitchen balcony, cheered on by the
midgets. The door of the kitchen balcony would not budge – after all the
domestic help (lets call her Balwant Kaur of the folk song fame) had latched it
with incomparable finality. The watchman inched his way into the main balcony used
usually by the homeless monkeys to enter and check our fruit bowl. After more
than a few nudges, the door opened. I cannot tell you how thankful I was for
the careless Sagittarian daughter that I have!! We got inside our home and
nothing could be more of a relief.
Of course, we haven’t found the lost keys of our kingdom. Or
the key-chain. And as this is not the first key that had been lost, we only had a singular original one left. The copies made of it confused the lock mechanism
so much that we’ve had to replace the locks. So anyway, you who have the keys,
you can’t get in. If you had, there would be nothing for you – except one
fantail goldfish, the orphaned iSmash, books of
various genres, and a pile of junk that my kid calls treasure. Nevertheless, I
often mull about this very curious disappearance and while we've been attributing all our maladies, moods and madness on the heat, it could not have possibly melted the key and the key-chain away.
Mumbai friend you are the bigger reason: If it wasn’t for her,
I would be the house hermit that I am and still be firmly in possession of my
keys.
Trust me – am on the edge of the edge. Koi doubt maat rakhna.
