A thief entered my parents' bedroom

On Tuesday, the 21st of April, a thief gained entry into my parents' bedroom. We are not very sure as to when he actually came in. But, the fact of the matter is that he was lying down under the bed, right below the side where my mother sleeps.

She had gone to sleep around just after 10:30 PM and within 5 minutes or so, she felt something move below the cot. She got up and looked underneath the bed expecting to see a squirrel or even a rat. But she ended up making eye-contact with a man stretched out in a supine position.

She immediately raised an alarm. I was downstairs at that time and by the time I understood that it was my mother calling for me, I also hear some footsteps from the floor above. I still thought that perhaps it was my mother having some kind of health related issue and ran upstairs.

On reaching the first floor, my first thought was to go towards her bedroom. But I saw her on the floor near the main door of the hall and she was shouting that a thief ran away towards the balcony. I rushed out to the balcony, but found no one there.

I gave a general "daei" shout from there. Then called the watchmen on duty in the house diagonally opposite ours. My mother joined me in the balcony by then and told me that a thief ran away from under her bed and out of the balcony.

She was, quite naturally, in a total state of shock. I was mildly shocked myself and checked with her if she had been hurt. She had tripped on her own when she tried to follow the thief on his way out and a tooth had moved out of its place and cut the lip. There was some minor bleeding.

The watchmen who were now at my gates kept asking as to what happened. I gave them a brief narration and asked them to look around the compound to see if anyone was there. After their quick search, I asked them to wait and went downstairs with my parents (my father was also in the ground floor when my mother shouted for help, but he was in the loo and joined us upstairs a minute or two later).

I let the watchmen inside. I left my mother with my father and went with the watchmen to the first floor. We looked around the house. All rooms. Shelves. Cupboards. Lofts. Just to ensure that there was no one else. After they gave us the "all clear" signal, we decided to call the Police.

My next door neighbor Mahesh who also came in by then, insisted that we inform the Police. I called up 100 and passed on this information. But it was almost 11:20 by the time I made this call and so a Patrol van came by around 11:35.

A lady S.I and a constable came in. We narrated the incident. Took them to the scene and gave a detailed narration there too. They asked us to relax and gave us a lot of assurance. The lady was especially very supportive. She gave us her mobile number and asked us to call her for anything anytime.

After all this dust settled, we all retired back to the confines of my room where all of us have been sleeping since that night (Thursday night is going to be third straight night).

I have just narrated the incident so far. The impact it has left on our collective psyche is unimaginable. My mother is very much in a state of shock/fear and so is my father. I want to write a lot of things, but I first need to calm myself. I thought it would be easy for me to write it, but I got goose pimples while typing some of the lines here.

It is just the prayers and good karma that has helped us come through this incident without any loss or impact, except the psychological one of course. We can only thank the almighty for saving us in this time and also my gratitude to all our friends and neighbors who have dropped in from last evening, once the news spread through the local grapevine.

Influence of red and blue colors

I recently came across this article. I am sure you have come across reports about similar studies elsewhere too.

After I read this, I suddenly had this big urge to validate the claims made by the study. As you may remember, I changed the color of my bedroom to Red from Blue last April.

Since these were the two colors mentioned in the research, I wanted to see if I had become any less creative due to this color change from blue to red. Not that I am alluding myself to be very creative just because I blog a lot, but here are some numbers for you to munch (Please note that I am excluding April 2008 from these calculations since it is the month when the color change took place):

Time between May 2008 and January 2009 = 9 months. This is the time when my room was Red.
A similar time frame when the walls were blue would be July 2007 till March 2008, the same 9 months.

# of posts between May 2008 and January 2009: 63
# of posts between July 2007 and March 2008: 145 (Even if you discount the 20 posts of my travelogues in this period, the count is still a healthy 125).

# of posts between May 2008 and January 2009 that attracted comments: 28
# of posts between July 2007 and March 2008 that attracted comments: 63

# of Random Observation posts between May 2008 and January 2009: 8
# of Random Observation posts between July 2007 and March 2008: 24


Based on this data, it is very evident that from the time my bedroom turned Red, I have not been the same blogger that I was when the color of my bedroom was Blue.