Out of Contact

I hadn’t been to a police station for quite a long time. In fact I had been to a police station only once in my life and that was almost twenty five years ago. The night before the door frames were to be fixed in the second floor we were constructing, they were stolen. A complaint was lodged and the cops made a visit. After about six months I was asked to come to the police station. They told me to sign a statement they had prepared saying that despite the efforts of the cops the property was untraceable. It meant they wanted to close the case. That was in 1984.

Last Sunday I went to go to the police station, for the second time in my life. I wanted to lodge a complaint. My mobile phone was stolen in the night before. I was sleeping with the bedroom window open and sometime during the night a thief had made away with it. I had bought it three years ago for three thousand bucks after being told that I would get a departmental SIM. I was reluctant but I had to buy it as I had no choice. Until then I had lived without a mobile but afterwards it was sort of impossible to go without it. Not that I have a large circle of friends but it was very handy to keep in touch with them. It also served as a watch (reason why I don’t wear one), an alarm and also a paperweight, sometimes. Then suddenly it was gone, but only for a day.

Every one advised me to lodge a complaint with the police. After consulting my cop friend I went to the police station in the morning. ‘You mean you want to meet the Circle Inspector to lodge a complaint about your missing mobile?’ the elderly constable at the entrance sneered. His attitude changed when I told him I knew the CI even though I didn’t. He told me the CI wasn’t in but a Sub-Inspector was available. I went in to give the complaint to him. He was a young man, maybe a fresh recruit but he had a large pistol before him on the table. There was another fellow in the room, some kind of an astrologer with a chain of beads around his neck and a large tikka on his forehead. I wanted to ask him if he would tell if my phone could be traced but I didn’t.

Later in the afternoon going through the haul I had at Abids I got a surprise. One of my generous brothers gifted me a mobile phone. It was an LG model, a basic one but with an FM radio. I had a phone but no SIM. They’d give a duplicate one at the office but I have no way of getting back the telephone numbers of my friends that were in the phone I lost. I’m wondering how to contact all my friends and let them know I’ve lost their phone numbers. Any ideas?