kishorebhargava

I’m not particularly superstitious, but every now and then somebody takes great effort in reminding me that Friday the 13th is not a good day to be doing anything. Well, good or bad one does have to get along with life. My day started with a little bit of a misunderstanding on a meeting time. Soon I was driving across town to attend a meeting. I reached a little late but fortunately for some very understanding people and I had a great meeting. If the business does come through, I know I will enjoy working with this firm.

While I was in Delhi and not far from Lajpat Nagar I decided to visit my parents-in-law and have lunch with them. Had not visited for a long time so was looking forward to it.

At best of times Lajpat Nagar is packed. On a weekend it gets worse, I kept hunting for a good spot to park and eventually landed up parallel parking behind a bunch of cars. Of course, I left the car in “neutral” so it could be pushed around and went off to lunch. At the back of my mind  I did have a niggling feeling that I should check on my car and kept going out to the balcony to see if there was any sign of the parking attendant or if the car had been moved.

That’s when I first noticed it:

A little brown briefcase seemed to have appeared in front of my car out of nowhere! At first I did not pay attention, but the second time I went out to the balcony, I saw the commotion building up. Got a closer look at it:

I went down to see what was going on and started hearing the various stories. “A speeding Indica, passed by and someone threw the case out of the car”. “Oh no you got it all wrong, it was a guy on a motorcycle and his bag just fell off”.

Someone had taken the initiative and called the police, but it seems that several police vans passed by and none of them stopped. Either not their beat area or off-duty! About 20 minutes later some police did start arriving on the scene and had the two ends of the road blocked off.

Almost an hour after the police arrived, someone came looking for me to move my car. Though I was a little worried, I decided to get my car out of the way. One of the policemen actually said to me…”What a fine place to park your car!”. I did tell him that when I parked there was no briefcase there but he wasn’t listening. He just wanted me to clear the area by moving my car.

The commotion started building up now and lots of cars were being stopped on the other side of the road. A little later a single ambulance also arrived on the scene.

It took over thirty minutes of finding all the car owners and finally getting the place cleared of all cars. One of them even had to be pushed out of the place since it was totally dead and the guys pushing came inches within running over the briefcase. But it was finally all clear.

It was over two hours when the bomb disposal squad arrived on the scene. A nonchalant cop in a pink shirt and what looked like a large lens or torch, bravely came up to the briefcase.

He poked around with the large black thingy, looked up at everyone and proudly announced “खाली हैं” as he opened it. The case was totally and completely empty.

Open and shut case or as a friend of mine on Facebook pointed out a “Brief Case”.

Much to everyone’s disappointment, it turned out to be nothing at all. That was actually scarier than anything else. People were expecting something drastic to happen. The police looked totally unprepared, no protection, no helmets nothing. The bomb squad guy, well the pictures say it all.

The end of the drama. Notice that the building under which this briefcase was found has a complete glass front, the opposite building the one in which I was, also has a glass front. Had this really been a bomb I cannot begin to fathom the damage that would have been caused. While the road was blocked for traffic, more and more people kept gathering at the site. All I can say is thank the lord!

My day was not yet over though. I headed out after lunch to a client’s office where we had a rather energetic Independence Day celebration. I do not have photos of the event as yet but there were lots of cameras and I did take many photos so some shall certainly follow soon.

In all I had a full-of-excitement “Friday-the-thirteenth”, how about you?

Cheers…Kishore
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