Darkest Before the Dawn !!!!

This one is based on a real experience. It was the first time I ever experienced a robbery....
-Manoj

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It's like a bizarre dream. I suddenly hear shouting. I almost wake up then sink back into sleep thinking it is just some dream. Then I hear Dinesh, my roommate shout and open my eyes to see him running out of the room. This is too wierd to be a dream. I jump out of bed and run after him. He yanks the door open and runs out. Outside the girls on the first floor are screaming "Chor, Chor" (Thief, Thief).

The time is about 5:30 in the morning. It is the time when most people are in the deepest part of their sleep cycle. As I come out of my front door and look around groggily, the setting looks quite surreal. It is almost dawn but still quite dark. The sky looks bright, but my surroundings are still in shadow. I almost decide that the setting is too wierd to be anything but a dream, when suddenly I see Dinesh and one of the girls running after the thief, and I follow suit. By the time we reach the ground floor the fellow has already hit the street. He suddenly stumbles and one mobile falls down from his hands.

He takes off into a side street and Dinesh follows him. I'm about to run after them and help Dinesh when it suddenly hits me that I saw my roommate yanking open the door and running out, but I just don't remember seeing him pull the latch open. It suddenly dawns on me as I stand there in the pre-dawn twilight that we also have been robbed. Then I suddenly remember that I had a larger than usual amount of cash lying in my cupboard. I decide to run up and and check on the money as the thief is anyway out of sight, and given the supreme state of fitness that I maintain (Tch..Tch.. ;-)), I'm absolutely sure that there is no way I'm going to catch any thief on foot, especially when the guy is running for his life.

I rush into the house and find that my mobile is gone, but to my relief I find that the cash is still exactly where I had left it. I lock the house, rush out, get on my bike and go around looking for any kind of movement on all the roads around the house. There is not one soul in sight and I'm afraid the thief may have decided to confront Dinesh and may have hurt him. I rush back to the house to see Dinesh returning barefooted and empty-handed from the opposite direction. He tells me that the thief just disappeared into some shanties quite a distance away. I'm quite angry at the thieves and feel like slapping them.

We return home with a heavy heart and after checking through our belongings, decide that the thieves have not managed to lay their hands on anything other than my mobile, and some cash in Dinesh's purse. We are puzzled by the open door, as I clearly remember shutting and bolting the door after Rohit left, late yesterday night. Rohit is one of my friends who lives quite close to my place and we were having fun watching movies on TV and talking till late the previous night. We then notice that the mosquito net on the window near the door has been slashed with some blade and the thief must have put in his hand and pulled the latch open.

We go down to check on the girls and realise that the same modus operandi has been used at their place too. Their window also was open and the thieves managed to get the door open. The thieves had taken both their mobile phones and some cash from one of the girls' purses. The purse was just near her head when she was sleeping. The thieves were so audacious that they got the mobiles, came out into the drawing room, opened the phones, took the SIM cards out of the phones and left them behind. They were careful to take the chargers though as the phones have less resale value without chargers.

To be continued...My saga with the police just trying to get them to lodge a complaint and get a copy of the FIR....