The (almost) Robbery

My immediate family seems to court low level disaster of some variety or the other with distressing frequency .

One Ramadan in my mid teens. Five strange men nonchalantly walked into our home. Two of whom then detached from the larger group and strolled into the kitchen where I was making tea.

The nice young gentlemen very politely requested that I make my way to the lounge.

I indicated that I was involved in making tea and might take a few minutes to get there.

A little less polite now. They brusquely suggested that I leave the kitchen immediately .

Being a stubborn sort. I replied that I would get around to it. Just as soon as the tea was done.

Around about this time. My sister appeared in the doorway looking very pale and pissed off.

"you idiot, they have guns"

The Nice young men were not as I had initially assumed, friendly handy men come to repair our perpetually leaky faucet.

Put out by my most recent refusal to budge.

They gesticulated wildly and brandished what did indeed appear to be a gun.

Oh, well.

I could take a hint. This time I reluctantly complied.

Once assembled, we all sat in the lounge looking quizzically at each other. Waiting for the drama to unfold.

No one seemed particularly fazed.

My maternal uncle was visiting.

My father had decided a stint of spiritual rejuvenation and holier-than-thou harassment was in order and had betaken himself to Raiwind (hub of all that is tableegh related) for the duration of Ramadan.

My paternal grandmother lived with us at the time.

The young men likewise exchanged looks.

Theirs were slightly puzzled.

Where was the fear?

And why for the love of God was everything and everyone so hopelessly shabby.

The expensive electronics and sparkly chandeliers which should by rights have decorated a home worth its weight in tasteless faux-grecian pillars were glaringly absent.

Our homes external appearance, though aesthetically dubious, was, given our local architectural context, indicative of a certain income bracket.

It was big, it had beckoning balconies, the aforesaid unnecessary columns and large if seemingly random picture windows .

The garden was tasteful and immaculately maintained. Why then was the interior so unimpressive.

On a good day. I would say that our house had a certain lived in charm. The worn marble floors, high ceilings and battered furniture could be labeled quaint as opposed to simply dehati chic.

But in that particular instance. It looked like a hurricane had just hit our lounge.

Leaving behind only the ragtag remnants of the pakoras we had recently ingested on our single minded march to greasy degeneration during iftaar .

I was perversely ashamed.

These young men had been lured here under false pretenses.

I felt more than a little guilty over their very obvious disappointment.

But gamely. They rallied

The breaking and entering had already been taken care of. There had to be something of worth somewhere.

"Jo kuch bhi hai nikaal do."

How trite

In the interests of historical accuracy I cannot furnish our unexpected visitors with a better script.

In response, my dadi waved her walking stick at them in a semi threatening manner.

They stepped back perturbed.

This was off script.

The runtiest of them, perhaps in an attempt to prove his mettle. Lunged forward. Placed his gun on my uncles temple and repeated the line. More threateningly now.

My uncle superciliously stared down his nose at the runty one

"soch lo, main colonel Iftikhar hoon".

I cringed, Inwardly cursing the military industrial complex and its deluded acolytes.

Great, we were all going to die.

My mother, more pragmatic in her worldview and perhaps finding the immediate presence of firearms more persuasive than her brothers bravado, stood up muttering about keys and how she wasn't quite sure where they might be.

No one ever knew where the keys were . We were definitely going to die.

As a household, we are notoriously disorganized but dying for it seemed to me an unfairly excessive penalty.

Meanwhile the warlike waving of the walking stick continued unabated from my grandmother's corner.

The tea was probably unsalvageable by now.

From outside three gunshots broke the sudden silence.

Our guests looked at us.

Our unimpressed faces.

The general sparseness of the lounge.

The sound of gunfire.

They seemed to be weighing their options.

They exchanged a look. Before reaching an unspoken understanding.And filing meekly, mumbling sheepishly about mix ups and mistakes. In unbroken, single file straight out the side door through which they had entered.

How dare they? Barging in unannounced and then leaving just like that.

I felt strangely rejected. Insulted even.

Did they feel we weren't worth the robbing? We weren't rich but we weren't THAT poor.

I had a perverse urge to bring them back in by the scruff of their necks and catalog our assets for them.

There were more pressing concerns at hand. The little brother was nowhere to be found.

Five minutes of sobbing and semi hysterical searching later. The doorbell rang.

The little brother surrounded by a gaggle of confused policemen stood on the doorstep.

He had been in the drawing room which opens directly onto the front lawn when they came in. He had slipped out undetected when they came in the side door.

He had alerted the guards across the street who had fired some warning shots and then alerted the local police unit.

Oh, so it wasn't us.

It was them. They were cowards. We were worthy after all.

Those five men were later apprehended that same month, having carried out a string of armed robberies in our area. They were charged with theft, assault and battery.

In retrospect I am intensely grateful for our close save from possible calamity.

Excuse my irredeemably fucked up thought processes though