A handful of thoughts

Some years ago in Manali, when I had asked the manager for keys of my room, he fell from the sky? A smile on his face, he said, “Keys? What do you need keys for madam? We do not lock our rooms here.”

That was a slap on my face. Hailing from Calcutta, I did not know back then, what words like safety, trustworthiness, or honesty meant. But now, as I write in 2009, the situation has worsened and I am sure (unfortunately) it will worsen further in the days and months to come. My Calcutta will become like Delhi and Mumbai, that shoot to headlines every now and then for rapes, murders, burglaries, et al. Calcutta is no longer safe.

Only a few days back, a friend of mine was hit on his head in Karunamoyee in Salt Lake and found himself lying on the road in Amherst Street (about 10 km from Karunamoyee) and he doesn’t remember how he got there. He wasn’t drunk. At around 11:30 his wife got a call from someone who said that they have found a man lying on the road in Amherst Street. They had seen him get off a taxi. He had a wound at the back of his head and was bleeding profusely. We are still clueless.

The other day, a burglar broke into one of my friend’s residential complex. It was around 3:00 a.m. The burglars had broken the lock on the common collapsible gate first. Then, they had bolted all flats from the outside.  The lock to my friend’s flat was also broken and just as they were about to enter, she and her husband woke up. The burglars fled. Thankfully they were not carrying any weapon. But they could, and some of them will. All this is very sad, but true.