Losses and leavings

Most of us fall victim to some kind of theft or pick-pocketing at least once in our lives. We think we have nothing of interest for thieves or we have all our bases covered and then — whoosh — the lock is broken and the house is burgled, the suitcase disappears from under our noses, or a pocket is slit and our cash is removed!

Our first encounter with thieves was when we were quite young. Father, a cop, was on tour, and we kids and our mother were fast asleep when our house was broken into and our cupboards and shelves were gone through without anyone hearing a sound!

We didn't lose anything valuable — because we had nothing valuable — but I recall everyone discussing at the time that the thieves had been rather stupid.

First of all, it had been a big risk for them to enter a police officer's home — even if the officer himself was not in town — because there were guards in the compound. Two, very obviously, they had not done their research well, or they would have known that this particular police officer was cash strapped and had nothing worth taking! And three, the burglars needed a crash course in gemmology for they had no idea what was precious and what was not —or maybe they just felt that a cop had to have valuables stashed somewhere!

So, they dug their hands into our little boxes of trinkets, rummaged through our toys, and picked up anything that looked remotely like it could be of gold or silver. Some beads of ours that looked like pearls, Mother's shiny costume jewellery, her silver painted brush, comb and mirror, and other things cherished by us but probably discarded by the ‘fence' on sight! The only real ‘taking' was in the form of the box of small change that was used to get the daily vegetables and milk — in those days, not more than five or 10 rupees!

We got off lightly in later encounters too. Father was pick-pocketed while he was travelling on a local train, his purse carelessly open to view in his bush-shirt pocket.

He believed that he was immune to pick-pockets because he had ‘cop' written all over him, and no one would dare slip his purse out from under his eagle eye. Well, someone dared and he never got back his purse or his money — but it was just a couple of hundred rupees at the most.

Getting smarter

Those past incidents made us smarter — or so we thought — and we complicated our lives with cards and codes to avoid carrying cash. But we still believed that no one would break into our house or lift our luggage on journeys — and if they did, they'd feel sorry for us and would probably leave us a couple of gold chains, since we had none for them to pick up! We hadn't counted on thieves getting smarter too. Now they are tech savvy, they do their research, they understand a traveller's psychology, they are quick, they are clean — we stand no chance with them. As we found out recently when a suitcase was picked up from the train and laptop, external hard drive, credit cards, debit cards, and identity cards were taken without even breaking the lock!

Once cards were blocked and passwords were changed, however, we could not congratulate ourselves on our cash on hand being intact. For it was then that we sat down to work and realised what had been the greatest loss of all — the content of our lives and the product of our minds that were stored in that laptop and hard drive.

Obviously the new generation of predators of the purse know exactly what is of value!

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.