trapped!
Sunday, December 10th, 2006
You know the guy in the neighborhood that the kids like to play pranks on? It’s typically a crotchetty old man with his pants hiked up and “Keep off the Grass” signs covering his unmowed lawn. But in some cases, it’s just a goofy foreigner that the kids like to have a laugh at. In my neighborhood, that foreigner is me.
I have fun with it. When I get 47 calls a day from the same little boy telling me either “This is security, there is a monster in your apartment” “I’m having your baby” or “I’m having your abortion” I just reverse prank, and answer my phone as though they’ve called a Chinese restaurant, or a French bistro. When the same boy steals my bike out of my garage every day and hides it somewhere else in the apartment block, I just consider finding it to be part of my morning routine.
Until he locked me in my own apartment and got me shoved down the stairs by an angry man in his underwear!
Today, as I returned home from dinner, I unknowingly bumped into the boy on my way in. It was a boy I had often bumped into and exchanged pleasantries with. He politely asked how my trip to Aurangabad had gone (a trip I didn’t post about because it will be an episode of my show next month), I told him it was nice, he asked if I’d caught the boy who kept stealing my cycle, I said no, but I found my bike everyday, so it was ok, and he asked if I was going to be in my apartment all night. I said yes. I walked away thinking, there’s a 50/50 chance that he’s either a sweet little boy who would never be the troublemaker, or he was the kid, and was a little criminal mastermind. Either way, he’s a cool kid.
At about 10:30pm, my doorbell rang. I tried to open the door, and it had been latched from the outside. There was no one there. I had not only been ding dong ditched, but trapped in my own apartment (this would be the third time, the first two being because of faulty door locking mechanisms, the reason there is a latch on the outside) In about as much time as it would take for a little boy to run down a flight of stairs, my phone rang. It was the boy.
“How are you?”
“Oh, I’m okay, were you going to open my door?”
“I would never lock your door, I’m your friend.”
“Okay, I’ve got to go, I have to call security.”
I hung up, and dialled 999.
“Hello, this is security.”…..IT WAS THE BOY.
“This…. this is security…?”
“What is wrong with your door? Where is your cycle?”
You’ll have to imagine me reeling back from the phone with the same look of sheer bewilderment and panic that anyone in a horror movie makes before saying “He’s calling from inside the house!”
I hung up. I stared at the phone as though I were afraid that it was haunted. It rang.
“He…. hello?”
“Yes,” the boy said, “this is security, I will come open your door, you must pay me ten rupees.”
I slammed the phone down. I did the standard procedure in these situations and hung out the window frantically waving down the guards in the mini-security station near my building. (We’re all buddies now, we exchange salutes every time I walk in or out, so these days they run right up if I call them instead of staring blankly) They rushed up and opened the door.
“Latch,” the guard said, as he mimed how the door had been when he arrived.
“Yes,” I said, and mimed someone latching the door, ringing the doorbell and running.”
“Boy,” he said, and held up his hand to indicate the boy’s height.
“You know th-” I remembered not to get into too complicated of English. “What your number?”
“999″
“I call 999″ I mimed talking on the phone, “boy answer!”
The guard walked over to the phone, and dialed the security number, and looked out my window at the far off security station. He did some scolding in Hindi, hung up, and told me “boy.” Apparently no one had been in the office, so he just walked in and answered their phone.
“Why is the boy answering your phone? Who do I call if there is a problem???”
“Sorry sir, sorry,” and they left.
A couple of minutes later I got another call from the boy, laughing and asking if security had opened the door, and this time I could hear both of the same security guards talking in Hindi in the background.
I marched down, and went to the security station, where the same two security guards were now standing.
“Where is the boy?”
“Sorry sir, sorry, sir. Boy go home.”
“Where boy home? Someone tell boy’s mother and father.”
It was still just a game, but I was going to win this round.
They awkwardly tried to avoid eye contact, even though I was standing in front of them.
“Call Society manager.”
“Morning.”
“No morning. Call now.”
He spent another 60 seconds trying to pretend like I wasn’t standing in front of him.
“Ok,” I said, “I have society manager’s number. 2 minutes, come back.”
I went back to my apartment and rummaged through my documents to see if it was there, but no luck. I went back to the security station. This time, there was an angry man in his underwear standing with them. As soon as I walked up he started screaming at me in Hindi.
“HINDI??????? HINDI??????? HUH???????”
I turned to the guards, “Who is this guy?” No answer.
The man continued to scream in my face and get little bits of spittle on my glasses and then walked away angrily
“Who was that?”
The two guards looked very confused, talked in Hindi back and forth about how to explain and then said in a very unreassuring voice “…manager?”
“That no manager, manager Raju Kale. Call Raju Kale.”
The guard rooted around in his notebooks, found the number, and wrote it down.
“Call tomorrow.”
I dialed the number. Raju answered, I explained the entire story, and asked him to talk to his guards about guarding their station, and the parents about the boy. I passed it to the guard. He explained the entire story. The phone was passed back to me.
Raju told me “It was mistake. Boy called the wrong number on accident.”
I explained that that was very much not the case.
“Boy live in A-302. He only call wrong number.”
I explained the entire story again. He asked to talk to the guard again.
The two spoke for a while, then Raju hung up before getting back to me.
I asked what was going on, the guard tried to ignore me again.
“Ok,” I said, “I will go to A-302″
The guard must have called to warn them as I was walking up the stairs. Before I even got to the door, the same angry spittle launching man in his underwear burst through his door barrelled toward me and shoved me with all his strength, while screaming in Hindi loud enough to wake up all of the neighbors in all the adjoining buildings. I grabbed onto the railing to keep from falling over and said “Just tell your boy to stop calling me. That’s all I wanted to say.” But he kept shoving, and screaming. I turned around, and started walking down the stairs. The man tried to shove me down the stairs. Once again, I was saved by grabbing the railing.
“I’m going, man, geez.”
He kept following, and kept screaming.
Every time we reached a new flight of stairs, he tried to shove me down that one.
“I don’t know if you were aware of this or not, but the direction you’re pushing me in, is actually the same direction I’m walking in, so it’s relatively unnecessary.”
He followed me all the way outside, and started acting like a drunken tough guy at a bar, trying to push the other guy into hitting him first so he can fight. He seemed frustrated that I had no interest in fighting him and rather walked away patiently saying things like “there’s really no need to go crazy, man.”
I just got back to my apartment. That was kind of weird.
