Much like the village barber, visiting house help always have stories to share carrying bits of gossip from house to house. This morning Jyoti, the young girl who sweeps the house came up with this unusual tale – unusual because petty thieving has become quite a thing of the past in our neighbourhood especially bag-snatching.

“Did you hear about the thief?” she asked me
“No, what happened?”
“I was crossing the road when suddenly a thief started running away with the bag. And I chased him but he ran away.”
“How did you know it was a thief?” I asked
“Well actually I didn’t know it was a thief. There was a girl who was waving her arms about and  yelling laptop laptop instead of shouting chor chor. There would have been more people giving chase if she had called out chor.  Who’s to know what a laptop is? Anyways, I asked her what the matter was and she pointed out to the man and said he’d run away with her bag.”
” So why didn’t she chase him?”
“Oh well she was too fat!”

It seems this young girl was talking on her mobile and thief taking advantage of her lack of attention made a grab for her bag. As for the policemen who are normally a plenty on our road, they were surprisingly absent because there was no VIP coming into town!