Gone in 35 Seconds

Sincere thanks to :

• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's SHERLOCK HOLMES ,

• Satyajit Ray's FELUDA and ofcourse
  

• Pran's CHACHA CHOWDARY

THE SITUATION

When my uncle handed me  5 notes of 100rs each to pay the Gas bill, somewhere deep in my heart flashed a Cautionary Sign - " Beware of our Servant ".

Every day when our Servant presses the "calling bell" at seven in the morning, we started our struggle. To be precise, we had two struggles:-

1. Struggling to reach the door and open it.
2. Struggling to keep our eyes open.

After the struggle, of course we are dead, back in the bed . Meanwhile she would do the dishes and mop the floor . In this time frame ,when we could hardly notice whats happening around us was called the "Dead Hour".

And in this Dead hour lay the clues for the missing money and soap.

Coming back to the cautionary sign " Beware of our Servant ".... I took the 500 rupees and slipped it into my empty wallet . Now that was not enough, I had to hide it and so I slid the purse under my mattress. And then I did one big mistake . After watching t.v I accidentally dozed off in my drawing room instead .

At 7 in the morning, the bell rang and I sprang up. I could as usual, hardly open my eyes and I stumbled to the door. I opened it and welcomed her with my almost chinese expression. And then followed the "Dead Hour".

Anyways I did not feel any reason to panic, coz the wallet was under the mattress, and it was just one in a million chance that she would find it.

But when I opened my wallet, I finally realized that The one in a million chance had finally arrived.

She had fled with 200rs, leaving me to stare at 300rs. Yeah! you are right she maintained the 2:5 ratio. But why? Because she had to come the day after . I stood in my room thunderstruck as if I had lost $200 million. It was not the money, but because I felt cheated.

One part of me told me that it was not completely her fault. Two careless bachelors sleeping as if shot dead by some terrorist; it was just human to flee with their money.

The other part told me that I should catch her red handed.

I went on with my Other Part.

THE PREPARATION

To catch her red handed I had to recreate the situation. Yes, you guessed it, I had to stuff my wallet again with money and keep it under the mattress. Meanwhile I would capture her in my old kodak digital camera.

To leave no chances of doubt, I carved out a neat circular shape from an empty box of Sony ericsson mobile phone and placed my cam in it. It was perfect and my CAMERA RIG was ready.

Now I had to put in some money.Anyway she would steal in the ratio 2:5 and so why put in a few hundreds at stake.And so I stuffed in 10 notes of 10rs each and slid it under my mattress.

My Camera was ready and the money was set as bait. My only worry was that , I really didn't want to end this blog with the line, "Elementary my Dear Watson, our servant has not only fled with the money, but also with our camera."

THE CLIMAX

The next day at 7am, the bell rang and I sprang up . For some reason I was not sleepy and had to imitate it to open the door. She entered and began to do the dishes. In the meantime I switched on my Cam.

It had a recording time of 60 minutes and her normal service time including the dishes, floor and to steal my money was 45 minutes.

I went back to sleep. But it was not my 'Dead Hour'. I waited impatiently for 45 minutes and then she left.
I rushed back to the scene of crime and checked my camera. Even though I got the video, it was not evidence enough because she was facing away from the camera.

I did not give up.

Everyday morning I had to repeat this exercise to get the correct angle and yeah of course I had lost a couple of money to get that golden video.

But it was worth it; where else can you study the body language of a thief. You could go to a market and study the behavior of a grocer or hire a taxi for a driver but a thief , you don't encounter one daily.

And Finally I did get one. Given below is the final video of my umpteenth attempt.

The Golden video is here :

If you cannot view the video above - Try the youtube link given below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_cZH9_eMks

I would have to stop here coz the moment I showed my uncle this video, He fired her from our house.

Anyway it was good that GONE IN 35 SECONDS was confined only to a few hundred rupees ,few bars of Soap and some portion of ghee .

Thats the end of this story and let me end this post with the hope that GONE IN 35 SECONDS - doesn't have a sequel.