We could see the light in the bedroom as we approached. Four-year-old Amala and my husband had picked me up from my aerobic classes and we were almost home. "The maid has left the lamp on," groaned my husband. The three of us laughed tiredly. It was 2000 hours IST, and all that we wanted was a quick dinner and bed. At first, when we simply could not open the door at the bottom of the staircase, we thought the latch had just got stuck. My husband borrowed a stool from our neighbour, seized the opportunity to remind me never to joke about the rock climbing camps he had attended, and by way of various ledges and crevices hopped on to our first floor balcony. Amala yelled encouragement from below, happy to see her father doing what she thought only Shah Rukh Khan and Shivarajkumar did. He found our door open, the latch broken. Rushing inside, he saw that our bedroom was a chaos, the cupboards wide open, clothes dumped in heaps all over -- and money, a Pierre Cardin gold-plated pen, our camera and my office tape recorder missing! He ran down quickly to let us in, warning me not to let the child into the bedroom. "The police will want to see the scene of the crime as it is," he hissed in his best mystery-novel voice. Our first thought was to rush Amala off to her grandmother's house before the police arrived. But the unpredictable brat refused to budge. She pulled out her homework from my handbag and plonked down in the middle of the living room, blissfully unaware of the family crisis. My husband, meanwhile, had dialled 100. "Robbery," he yelled. "Nimma area stationge heli saar [Inform at your nearest police station, sir]," replied a laconic voice. "Right!" said my husband in near-hysteric calm. He began searching the newly-released telephone directory for the number, only to find it had been changed just after the directory had been issued a month ago. That was when he thought up the bright idea of asking the police constable on sentry duty at the senior politician's house next door. "We have become good friends," he confided to me as he sprinted out. "We chat almost everyday while we wash the cars." A clarification here: my husband washes our two cars, of course; and the constable the politician's cars. He returned soon, repeating the telephone number breathlessly, and dialled it in an instant. I promptly carted Amala off to count the number of chillies that had ripened in our small terrace garden, a daily ritual that she enjoys thoroughly, to keep her out of earshot of the telephone conversation. "They're coming," said my husband. "You chaps simply must leave now." We were afraid that Amala might get scared by the sudden influx of policemen into her peaceful home. Unfortunately, in our excitement we had forgotten that she almost always wants to do exactly the opposite of what you want her to do. She sees no reason why you should win simply because you're bigger or older. Before we could talk her into leaving, the police had arrived. About 10 officers and constables. They were horrified by what they said was the first burglary in our neighbourhood, which is particularly well-lit, well-populated and has more than its fair share of politicians' houses. "The nice policemen just want to know your address and some other information," we told the delighted Amala, who simply would not be moved away from the scene. "So many of them to collect this information?" she asked. Then she brightened up. "Oh, they're interviewing appa!" She was on familiar ground there: someone asking questions and noting the answers. "But I thought they were policemen, not journalists..." A little later, the majority of the posse had left. Now there were only three constables, who were waiting for the fingerprint team. "I want to go to sleep now," Amala declared. "Please put some music on and tell me my bedtime stories." I looked helplessly at my grinning husband. Amala lay down on the divan in our living room. "Hug me tight," came her next demand. I plopped myself down beside her, glared at my husband and told him to keep the police out till I finished with the child. Soon, the songs from Shabdhavedhi, matinee idol Rajakumar's comeback film, interspersed with numbers from his son Shivarajkumar's new blockbuster Preethse, wafted from our living room. "The cops are going to think we are celebrating the robbery," hissed my embarrassed husband. "Besides, what will they think of our taste in music? Why must you keep playing these Kannada albums just because you are reviewing them for your newspaper and getting the little girl addicted to them?" "Saar," called a police voice from outside. My husband rushed out. "Can you understand Kannada?" "Of course he can," the reply came from another constable. "Can't you hear what music they are playing?" Just as we managed to put Amala to sleep, a dozen policemen tramped sombrely into our living room, past the prone bodies of my daughter and me. In what was our first shot of good luck that day, Amala didn't wake up. The police were extremely considerate, tried to goose-step around my sleeping daughter, spoke gently into the telephone, covered us in mounds of fingerprint dust and finally left. It was only after that, as we tried to push our clothes back into the wardrobes higgledy-piggledy, that we discovered the real catastrophe: the burglar had taken all of Amala's favourite chocolates! You see, she has this dreadful habit of waking up very hungry some nights. And then she refuses to eat anything but chocolates before she rinses her mouth and pops right back to bed. No chocolate, no sleep... and you bet there will be a noisy tantrum too. The thought scared us silly. It was close to midnight and we knew even the drug stores would be closed. We started dialling neighbours and relatives -- maybe one of them would have some chocs at home. To our utter dismay, we discovered that nobody's taste ran to simple Cadbury's milk chocolates, which is all that Amala will eat. We were offered an exotic array of liquor, truffles, almond and walnut chocolates -- but milk chocolates, no. Finally, we were forced to settle for the almond variety, which my worried elder sister and nephew brought over at once. "Are you sure you are alright?" she asked. She stopped short when she saw us sitting around quite cheerfully over the remains of a late dinner. There was an open bottle of chilled beer on the table too, in which we hoped to drown our sorrows. "Yes," replied my husband, with a goofy smile. He waved an old pair of socks at her. "You know what? The man unearthed my favourite pair of black socks. I thought I had lost it... it must have been in the back of my cupboard!" It was at that moment of total madness that I sat at the computer and got on the Net, just to calm myself. I found online an annoyingly cheerful colleague on the nightshift in our Bombay office. "We've been burgled," I screamed on ICQ, an instant messenger. "And they stole my daughter's chocolates! Tell the boss my tape recorder was pinched too!" I had expected sympathy. Instead, I received several bytes of mirth, followed by an assignment. "We insist you do a diary on the burglary," my message box told me. "And don't forget that bit about the chocolates." Early next morning, I woke to the sounds of crunching interspersed freely with curses. "I never thought eating almonds would be such a chore!" exclaimed my sleepy husband crossly. He was extricating pieces of almond from a bar of chocolate, popping them into his mouth at frequent intervals for the simple reason that he didn't know where else to store them. The bits of pure milk chocolate, of course, were going into our daughter's open mouth. "I hope," he spat out between almonds, "that all those chocolates gave that burglar indigestion!" Open M D Riti's handbag, and you'll find it brimming with Cadbury's these days!
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