The Purple Haze: Day 5

This is the snapshopt I took from the cctv camera whose printout I carried everywhere.

DAY 5: September 30^th, Tuesday, 2008

 

Note: Names of the companies have been changed for the obvious reason.

 

I am not just bad at spellings but also with counting. I counted wrong, when I said 5 days, it’s actually 6 days ;-)

Anyways, I struggled and got up in the morning (Day 5), skipped bath and breakfast and bolted towards Office. I had to complete some more formalities with respect to standby laptop.

At 10:10 am I got a call from Pramod (Police) who asked me to come down to the station. I went there, met Tabriz and got some valuable tips on how to go about the case today and then Pramod and I left to ICICI branch in MG Road.

We reached at around 11 am, and its closed. Apparently September 30^th is half yearly closing for banks. I was not ready to give up today as well, Pramod flashed his Police ID and talked to the Control unit manager in malyalam who arranged for us to meet a gentleman by name Mr.Raman. We met him, explained him the whole situation and what do we get.

“ All this data is stored and handled in Mumbai, I will send a mail and you should get the details by evening or by tomorrow.”

Its interesting how people change their minds to speed up the “help” process if we know the local language. After all my pleading and convincing in Kannada and a helpless wait for one hour our man Raman gave us the details.

The card was not an ICICI credit card, so there was no way he could have given me Rajeev Mukherjee’s details. Raman gave us the 16 digit card number and confirmed that it was a Standard Charted Credit card. He even gave us a contact with name Munavar who works in FCU ( Fraud Control Unit) of Standard Charted. I was so relieved to atleast get a clue.

Standard Charted was hardly one Km from ICICI. So Pramod and I walked down in 10 minutes. Meanwhile Pramod kept telling me we are bound to get lucky today, nothing can wrong. For those 10 minutes I took those words as a mere unexpected consolation from a Policeman.

I was wrong, everything was going well, fitting into places. We were worried whether Munavar will be there or not, even if he has come to office will he help us???? Since we weren’t carrying any formal police letterhead addressed to Standard Charted.

We met Munavar in the lift itself (what are the odds), and explained him Day 1 to Day 4. I even bluffed that I have my flight in another 8 hours so that he will hurry it up. And it worked, we got the details about Rajeev Mukherjee in 15 minutes.

Rajeev Mukherjee, one name that I have been hanging to since last 4 days, is a software engineer in “Fertility”. I got his number as well. Being a rookie, excitement took over sense of mind and I made a blunder.

I just wanted to check if this number is Rajeev’s and confirm he is from “Fertility” in Bangalore. I could’ve called as some ICICI/HSBC bank official for some Personal loan.

But no, the conversation goes like this

Aditya: “Hi My name is Aditya and I lost my laptop bag on Friday night at purple haze, were you there in purple haze last weekend?”

Rajeev: “ hello… hello… ummmmmm…. Which weekend are you talking about… I don’t know whether I was there…. I don’t know anything about any stolen bag”

Aditya: “ I am talking about last weekend…26^th sept.. Were you there?”

Rajeev: “ No I wasn’t there… I think you have called a wrong person”

Aditya: I wanted to you mo@#$% F*** as!@#$*.... But I resorted to “Hmm… well I have police with me, why don’t you talk to him”

Rajeev: “ No No no no…. don’t disturb me with all this, I am flying to US tonight. I don’t wanna talk to you any more”. And he hung the phone.

This conversation gave me the confirmation that this Rajeev is hiding something and this call gave him some time to think and act probably ( I still don’t know ).

 

I called up my friend Gaurav who works in “Fertility” to check Rajeev Mukherjee’s details in the intra directory. I got his building name, his cubicle and his IP phone. Gaurav in fact called him on his IP phone and tried to talk to him, but as expected Rajeev hung up on him as well.

 

We went back to Police station, after consulting with Sub Inspector Tabriz, I took two police men and went to “Fertility” to get this guy to Police station. Tabriz  gave me 3 blank letterheads with his signature and asked me to write a warrant letter if required.

I had to be sure Rajeev is still in the office, so I called up another friend of mine Pranav who works for “Fertility” and sits in the same floor as Rajeev. I asked him just breeze through his cubicle and check whether he is still there. Once I got the confirmation, we were on our way.

I have to admit, even though I was in deep shit with so much at stake, I was enjoying myself. I could not imagine doing all these things by going to the same old cubicle and pretending to be good at networking. (This statement should not be taken seriously by fellow Cisco Employees).

We reached “Fertility” campus, we checked with the security and they asked us to wait for the Security manager who had gone for lunch. We figured we can utilize this time and have our lunch as well.

“Fertility” is one of the companies in this campus which is huge and trendy. I was thoroughly enjoying the look in the eyes of bonded corporate’s. One thin,frail guy with a nice jacket surrounded by 2 cops on either side walking around the campus with head held high.( lol ;-) ). I treated the two cops, finished our lunch and continued our wait.

Finally, the security manager arrived, a grim faced stout man with oval rimmed glasses and a pathetic forced smile pasted on his face.

He seemed a typical old guy,pissed with his job and has fun in chit chatting and delaying important things. For eg.. he asked each one of ours ( there were 3 of us) history, which police station, who is the inspector, how is life…blah blah blah. One of the explained him the situation ( which was totally unnecessary). The manager took all the details on a sheet of paper and stared at it for like 10 long minutes. I wonder why these guys do this, do they wanna show that they are serious about something and in deep thought or do they wanna show that they have become old and it takes some good amount of time for them to comprehend things.

After all that staring, he says “ Fine… I will check with HR and get this guy Rajeev to call you by tomorrow evening”.

Me : “ I don’t think you understand the urgency of the matter. Why don’t you check in the directory where he sits and just get him to come down by calling him on his IP”

Manager “ Which company do you work for son?”

Me: “ Cisco Sir “

Manager: “ Hmm… good company, your company might have these directories but not “Fertility”. We have to go through HR and they are in a meeting for another 2 hours So I suggest you wait till then”.

Me: “Sir, please understand, this is very urgent and important. You don’t have to go through HR to call an employee.”

Manager said few words and went inside to check something. After fifteen minutes he came back and says “ The HR meeting is going on, its very important meeting and I can not disturb them for this matter. All the 120 HR’s are in this meeting so it might take more time. Why don’t you come tomorrow?”

One of the cops lost it, he took the manager to the side and told him that I am a minister’s Son and can cause lot of problems.

Manager got Rajeev and one HR in next two minutes. This is the same Rajeev i found on orkut. He was red in face. On asked why didn’t he pick the call he said he thought it’s a prank being played by one of his friends. And for the orkut thing, he said his internet was conveniently down from last two days. (working for an IT company).

We still spoke to nicely,explained him the whole thing and showed him the printout of the cctv snapshot. ( as seen in the begining of Day 5). 

He refused that he knows the person and can not identify him. He even called his two friends Ashish and Aravind who were with him that night. All of them couldn’t identify him. After explaining them that he came out with you guys form the same table, one of guys said “ Dude there is no logic behind your explanation.. I am sure you are wrong”.

On hearing this, the silently sitting cop stood up and said “ I will show you all the logic… come to police station”.

Those guys apparently with the feeling of helping me agreed on coming there and also check the cctv to get more clues.

I took them to haze and Santosh showed them the video, even while doing so they kept saying they don’t know this guy. There are five guys walking out from the same table, with this thief in the middle, three of them standing with me watching the video and one more was their friend. This was freakin crazy. One of them Aravind, who is a regular customer to haze from past 10 fuckin years, talks so much, I felt like punching him. He was the only one who knew kannada and kept talking crap by giving stupid explanations.

They had to agree that this thief bugger was with them, but still claimed they don’t know him. It was some random party where random people came and drank with them. He talked so much that he convinced Tabriz to give him time till evening so that they can find out who it was and help me. He kept talking as if they are actually doing a favor to me. I didn’t interfere and agreed on the timelines.

I went back to office to complete some more things in order to get standby laptop configured. In these dark times I just don’t smoke and drink.I eat “chaat”.

Guys...I am really sorry...something happened and I lost the 2nd part of this Day's Blog. I am not sure if I can write it again.

Ok I managed to write some short one so as to continue the story. 

I ate loads of “chaat” and reached haze at around 9 pm.Even the Haze Manager Satish was there. Rajeev Mukherjee, Aravind and Ashish arrived along with Felix from “minihard”. They finally confessed and this is what Aravind said in Kannada :” It was farewell party given by Rajeev since he is leaving to US. There were 5 guys, Me… Rajeev, Ashish,felix, Ashish’s roommates friend. We went back and realized it had to be him. The thing is we don’t even know. He had come here for an interview… he partied with us in the night and left. Somehow we got his number and address from a college slambook. His name is Somendra Singh. We called him and asked him whether he took a bag, he denied even to us. Then after telling him that there is a police case etc… he finally accepted and told us that he took the by mistake to delhi. He has assured us that he will return the bag by tomorrow evening, he is not going to come to Bangalore because he says that he is scared to come here…and if Police wants let them go there to Delhi…he can handle there”.

 

After this lame explaination… there were two dominant feelings that rushed in my head. One of anger with this bastard Somendra singh… who took my bag and the second of absolute happiness that atleast now I know what happened to my bag. All that I had done in last 4 days finally paid up and concluded as planned.

I wasn’t sure how to react. It was a kinda feeling that a hard working graduate would have when he gets in to Harvard after all those sleepless nights, but it’s a correspondence course( Bad example actually, probably I should stick to facts rather than hypothetical situations).

Somendra Singh, a jobless thief who can afford haze. They even gave his address : W2, Narayana Vihar, Street number 6, New Delhi, 10029. If he had come in front of me at this time, I would have definitely spent rest of my life in Koramangala Police station.

 

Anyways, I took these self confessed buggers to Tabriz, figured let him have the last say in this. He heard the lame explanation given by Aravind again. He took me to the side, he told me that they are lying, but lets not do anything now. We decided that we will wait till we get the Bag, then act.

Ashish was trembling with trepidation, intentionally or unintentionally he was involved in this. We tried to call Somendra Singh, but his cell phone was switched.

I wasn’t that relieved, Even though I had my hands on the door knob, the door still needed to be open. Still, this does not mean I will not celebrate my understated victory.

By the all the tata tata  bye bye  happened it was late, I entered Haze at  10:55 pm, 5 minutes before the closing time. Had 3 shots of large whiskey and slept like a dog with a stupid smile pasted on my face and dreaming the bag in my hands tomorrow.