"Friday the 13th" PWNED by "Thursday the 12th".

So, Friday the 13th is drawing to a close, and barring any TGIF-booze-fuelled hijinks from here till midnight, I have managed to go through it without any major incidents.

Well, yesterday kinda made up for it anyway. So what happened yesterday? Those of you who follow my tweets, or visit my sporadically-active Orkut/Facebook pages, got the point that my mobile was stolen. Or lost, according to Maraimalai Nagar's finest. 

But as with everything else, things are never what they seem to be. There’s always something that's not said.

Here's what really happened.

My mobile, or ex-mobile anyway, religiously belted out George Thorogood's "Bad To The Bone" at 6.30AM everyday. Including Sundays. And I religiously snoozed it as long as it took for it to the point, and went back to sleep till 7. Or 8. Or 9. Why should yesterday have been any different. As soon as the first guitar riff started echoing in the living room (yeah, we sleep in the living room. Welcome to The Life Of An SE.), I clicked on "Snooze", without even opening my eyes. I've worked at that. Around 7.30, Switchfoot started on "Dare You To Move" to tell me that somebody wanted to talk to me at this ungodly hour. Click. Mercilessly silenced.

What happens next, can be part of any Quentin Tarantino movie. And this is the part that really sucks (nope, still not over the whole lost-my-phone thing!), so I'm just going to rush through this. 

Roomie gets up 7.45ish, leaves for office around 8.30. Leaving the door closed, but not latched. Because the door is usually locked with a padlock from outside. With the three of us inside, not yet back from our trips to Neverland, he usually just closes the door. But the law of averages finally catches up with you when you're bent over, tying your shoelaces. With the emphasis on "bent over".

I finally decide to get up, and reach out for the mobile, which would be in the vicinity of my head. A quick hand-scan reveals that it's not there. So, it must be under the pillow. Right? Wrong! It's nowhere. Maybe Roomie-Who-Leaves-Early was looking at it and kept it somewhere. So I take Roomie 2's phone and dial my number. It's ringing. Except, I can hear it only through his phone.

Someone, let's call him Some Odd Bloke, or SOB for short, picks it up. I appeal in a jumbled mixture of Tamil, Hindi and English for him to return the phone, for which I would pay him whatever he wants. As expected he cuts the call, and after that every call is greeted with "The number you are trying to reach is currently unavilable...".

By this time Roomie 1 and 2 are doing frantic recons inside the house to see what else SOB has taken. All the money from my wallet too. Cards, thankfully, are still intact.

So here's what happened. Roomie-Who-Leaves-Early, does what he does, he leaves early. SOB walks into the house, picks up mobile, pulls out all the money from a wallet that's lying around, and thanks to my outrageous luck, it's mine.

Realization finally sinks in.

Mobile stolen. Check.

Wallet emptied. Check.

All this accomplished right in front of my eyes, except that they were closed. Check.

Major bummer. Double check.

Welcome to Singaperumal Koil. A small town with a big name, hiding unnoticed on the outskirts of both the Chennai and Kancheepuram districts. In fact, it's so strategically placed that neither district wants to claim ownership. A nondescript halt on the Grand Southern Trunk Road. If you run too fast in this town, you end up in the next one. One with an equally imposing name, Maraimalai Nagar.

Welcome to a world where anything is possible. To a world where three laptops are flicked during a power outage from a first floor apartment, because they happened to be near a window. A world where "SE" loosely translates into "Filthy Rich, Arrogant, and Gullible.". Where you have to shoo away the flies to see what you're eating. Welcome to the middle of nowhere.

The fact that a pack of tenacious SEs have survived in this desi equivalent of The Outback for this long is no mean feat. To see a documentary of their "Life", from early 2007, click here. Only 5 of the original 11 now remain. 

So, the done thing when your mobile is stolen is to block your SIM. The highly skilled individuals, down at the call center, put you through a "Virtual Frisk". And they are so polite that, they begin and end a sentence with "Sir". Also, every other sentence is "Thank you, Sir"."Sir, can you please confirm in whose name this number is taken, Sir?". "Thank you, Sir". " Sir, please stay on the line while I retrieve your information, Sir". "Thank you, Sir". Finally, my SIM has been barred.

Apparently, the next thing to do is to mail cop@vsnl.net with the following details.

Notice the use of words lie "just have to" and of course "no need to go to police". So easy. And therefore, guaranteed to NOT work. You see, disabling phones when you give them the IMEI number, is a no-go for GSM phones. ie, unless your phone came with a SIM of it's own, say "Tata goodbye" when you lose it. Atleast, that's what repeated interactions with Highly Skilled Individuals @ Call Center revealed.

Now, there's one part that I've left untouched. And it's my personal favourite. The bureaucracy.

cop@vsnl.net is the terror-inducing email ID of the Cyber Crime Cell. They have a mobile number too. The person who answers it has one thing to tell you. "File FIR local police station". "I sent you an email...hello? hello?". He's said it so many times, to so many gutted people, that it's become a lifeless monotone sans prepositions.

So Roomie-Who-Leaves-Early and me tagged over to the nearest police station. Which is located in the neighbouring town of Maraimalai Nagar. Extremely convenient that Singaperumal Koil does not have a police station of it's own. But that's not the point.

I will try to recreate the conversation from inside that Hallowed Place.

Me : Sir, my phone was stolen from inside my house.

Sir : Who stole?

Me : Eh?

Sir : Who allowed inside house?

Me : Huh?

Sir : Go see Madam. (...pronounced "Me-dum".)

Me : Thank you, sir.

Madam, meanwhile, was busy yelling at someone. So we waited outside, till she spotted us, and indicated that we should enter her presence.

Me : Madam, my phone was stolen from inside my house.

Madam : How door open?

Me : Door was not latched, only closed. (Notice that talking to important people with a lesser command of the language forces you to speak like them.)

Madam : Aha! You not take care of things, then what we do?!

Me : But ma'am, it was taken from inside the house!

Madam : No! How you know?

Me : Madam, I called the number and...

Madam : I see people like you daily. College students, roaming around on two wheeler, at 2 or 3 at night, all ganja.

At this point, I realize that the conversation is totally out of our hands. Which is a fate that it now shares with my mobile too.

Madam keeps going for another few minutes in a staccato mix of Tamil and English. We have reached a point where we expect her to accuse us of stealing a phone. But the storm blows over and she asks us to come the next day to see The Inspector. But, she says "Only missing! No stolen". 

Me : But madam, my phone was taken from inside the house!

Madam : Missing only!

Me : Thank you, madam.

I called up the Cyber Crime Cell to inquire whether a missing statement would be enough. "File FIR local police station".

It's like a thick fog that engulfs you. Bureaucracy truly rules. In every sense of the word.

Yeah, so coming back to where I started. 

Compared to this, Friday the 13th paled in comparison. That kind of stuff is hard to live up to. 




PS : And speaking of PWNED!, check this out. "Sick, Wicked and Nasty."