Heroic entry

I had shifted to this new place and was warned by the caretaker that there?s just one key to the front door. "Get two duplicate keys and keep them with the neighbours," he had said, writes Rajat Bhattacharjee.

I had shifted to this new place and was warned by the caretaker that there’s just one key to the front door. “Get two duplicate keys and keep them with the neighbours,” he had said.

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Unable to decipher such sophisticated coded language, I got busy unloading my stuff from the van. All done, I headed for the nearest grocery store. Keeping the ‘key warning’ in mind, I got a good old Harrison lock to close the door.

Once out, I suddenly remembered I had forgotten the door key inside. The doors here always closed disastrously from inside. And that’s exactly what happened! Cursing my hare-brained hurry I remembered a friend’s story. He had forgotten to take the door keys with him and his roomies were partying out at some faraway place that night. So after a late night shift when our man reached his place, the easiest option he saw was to climb a tree next to his first floor apartment window. Luckily he had left it open.

As he began climbing, his landlady, waking up from her sleep on the ground floor started shouting, “Chor, chor!”. She was terrified by the shadow outside her window. My friend had to loudly assure the old woman that it was he and a key disaster had happened.

Sadly, there was no tree to climb here and heavy iron grills guarded all the windowsills. The only available option that remained was to break open the door. On the first day? No way! Completely at sea, I approached the neighbours for help. Pat came the solution. “Have you left your bedroom window open?” Yes, I have. “Ok, get a lanky kid to climb from the plumber’s exit at the bedroom windowsill and let him sneak into the house to open it from the inside,” said a Good Samaritan. Why a lanky kid? “Because it’s a narrow passage up there.”
The search for the saviour ended at the housing society’s garden. The announcement was made and a thin Class VI chap came forward. The entire operation that followed took about 10 minutes. The gawky boy had to face a lot of falling debris because the iron net at the plumber’s exit hadn’t been removed for a very long time.

Up went the ‘Spiderman’, as I moved towards the stairs. The ‘janta’ had already assembled at the door. Out came the superhero and universal applause followed. I offered the hero some reward but he politely refused. He was losing precious playtime, he said. Also, he didn’t want anything. So I thought of writing about him today.