Can you call this a moment of truth? The moment I realized my bag had slipped out of my hand and that it was too far for me to catch it, however hard I tried? I could see the bikers speed away into the dark with my deep purple bag, and my world in it.
“My bag”, is all I could faintly utter and felt an emptiness hard to explain once I began to assemble the contents in my mind, while trying to chase the almost flying bike. The black phone diary, which had thousands of numbers of bureaucrats, businessmen, economists, ministers, MPs, and even film stars, collected painstakingly over many many years, was gone, I told myself, almost stopping to breathe. Some of those numbers were not meant for dialing ever, but for embellishment of the diary. I trusted this black book more than anything else, believing that it would never let me down, even if the phone was lost.
Also remembered how my friends had pulled my leg when I spent time organizing phone numbers in that black diary while on a holiday to Lansdowne, a small hill station not very far from Delhi. Many of them, who later called to mourn the lost bag and its contents, told me that they remembered the phone diary with much fondness!
Even though my mind was stuck on the phone book, I knew I had lost many other things too. Counted the cards, six of them. “Why on earth were you carrying those many cards,” was a voice I heard from somewhere, and chose to ignore it.
Immediately after calling 100 for cops, I dialled the relationship manager of a bank. He, who calls a dozen times a week asking me to invest in some scheme or the other, offered me some out-of-the-world advice. He asked me to call the customer service, which meant waiting for several minutes before connecting to the right fellow and getting down to business. It didn’t matter to him that the snatcher could well have shopped with the newly acquired debit cards! After a few seconds of screaming at him, the relationship manager agreed to help, perhaps putting on hold his dinner or movie or both!
Oh, but another bank had offered the card protection service some time back. While I had subscribed to the service, the number wasn’t saved on my mobile; hold your breath—it was neatly written in that black phone diary, which I had lost. Once the number was arranged through calls to colleagues, all the cards got blocked in a jiffy, and I was grateful even in the midst of sorrow that I didn’t turn away the bank exec who had introduced me to the “virtues” of the card protection service.
Getting the cards re-issued was another experience altogether. For some reason, none of the banks entertained me at the branch for re-issuing credit cards. The standard answer was, “call customer service”. For settling the debit card issue, most banks promised to get the job done in three to five working days, with varying degrees of indifference towards the customer. There was one bank however that stood out. After a few minutes of queries on the kind of card that one held, this banker handed me two envelopes—one had the fresh debit card and another the PIN—there and then.
Cash, PAN card, identity cards, cheque books were all there in that bag. All that can be handled over a period of time, I consoled myself. Some things however are irreplaceable, still trying to figure out what else was there in that not very large bag.
Besides the phone book, there was also a hand-written letter with colourful sketches and signs all over, given to me by a young colleague who was joining another media organization. I had read it many times but wanted to keep it for good. There were other precious pieces of papers too, some with scribbled verses that one had kept for reading again, sometime later. But that time may not come.
Still hopeful that I may just get back some of the things, maybe the phone book, the letter, the papers, I asked the cops at the police station whether there was any chance. “If a good soul gets any of the things and posts it, only then will you get it. Otherwise, no….”
While the cop’s reply broke my heart one more time, it’s time to look back and laugh over it. My sister reminded me it was a ‘Coach’ bag that she had got from some place and that the replacement must be a very local one for sure. My mother wanted to know if I was talking on the phone, as usual, while someone took my bag away. My colleagues wanted to know how exactly the bag was snatched. A friend, when he heard about the incident that very night, just laughed aloud as if I had cracked a joke.
But the best one was from a cop who was around while I was filing my complaint—when I mentioned PAN card as one of the lost items, he asked with a straight face, “which bank?” If nothing else, at least he cheered me up that sombre night last week!!