Geetanjali Krishna: The electrician gets a shock

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One morning, I found Sardarji moodily destroying a broken switch, muttering dark words under his breath. Wondering why the friendly old electrician was in such a snit, I took a glass of water to him and asked what was up. "I'm sorry," he said, "I'm too upset to concentrate on anything." I asked what happened, and here's what he told me.

"Do you remember the night last week when it poured heavily?" he asked, without really expecting an answer. "We awoke to find a window was leaking. By the light from the street, my son and I tried to seal the window while my wife mopped up the mess," he narrated. Just then, they heard some noises from the street, but didn't think anything was amiss until their son heard their car being unlocked. "We peeped quietly from our window, and saw a man stealthily opening our car door!" Sardarji continued.

Unfortunately, by the time they ran down from their third floor flat, the thief had already extricated what he needed. "We were enraged," said Sardarji, "this man had stolen our property from under our noses!" He and his son gave chase, and followed the thief up to a house nearby. He ran inside and shut the door upon them.

Thinking they had him cornered, they called the police control van and waited in the rain for it to arrive. It came promptly all right, but was of no use. "Do you realise it is four in the morning?" they said to Sardarji, "suppose we ring the bell and the robber isn't there? Where's the proof that the man you were chasing was the person who stole from you?" The police sent the soggy father-son duo home, promising to investigate the case later that day.

In the morning, Sardarji filed his report at the police station. The police said they'd visited the house where the 'alleged' thief had disappeared. "We were berated for hounding innocent citizens," they said gloomily, "the case is dead unless you can conclusively identify the thief!" Thinking privately that the police seemed to have been too easily persuaded, Sardarji left.

In the meantime, a mechanic informed his son that the parts stolen from their car were worth Rs 20,000. "But you can get guaranteed good quality second-hand parts at a third of this price in a place I know," he said. The shop was in Kashmiri Gate, so Sardarji made his weary way there. There, he got his first good news of the day. The shopkeeper said that his mechanic, who luckily lived near Sardarji's house, would fit his car with the required parts at a reduced cost of Rs 7,000 that very evening.

The shadows had lengthened to dusk when the mechanic arrived. It was raining again. The mechanic bent over the door of the car and Sardarji's son stiffened. "That's our thief!" he whispered. "Are you sure?" asked Sardarji, shocked. His son nodded. The police would be useless, Sardarji knew, so he called his neighbour's hefty sons. "Don't forget your hockey sticks!" he said. When the mechanic saw the approaching group, he prudently hid behind the car. "Touch me, and you'll go to jail!" he threatened, "I'm calling the cops."

"They made me apologise to the thief," said Sardarji, finally crushing the switch into oblivion, "and today, I actually had to pay that sneaky thief good money to get back what was mine in the first place! Maybe the mechanic, the thief and even some cops were in on it "" and together they gave this old electrician a shock to remember till the end of his days!"