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| Photo by Dhiva Krishna on Unsplash |
- It is both fun and pain to have an independent house. As much as there is freedom from a few things like nagging floor mates or just too many people around, there is also a pain to watch out for ourselves all around the house/neighbourhood. Houses used to be independent ones in the "golden" days where people would still live like Kings.
- One such problem of such a house is parking space around the house and more so if the house is adorned by many open road corners which means more places to watch out for. People generally just thrust their responsibility on others and suddenly there is a new car in one of the empty places around. If the parking is transitory then it is kinda OK, say park for a short while and then move on. But nothing is known of such cars, they could be stolen, there could be people staying in them, any other activities, etc. So it is a headache if such a thing happens. One can call the police to solve the problem but it involves filing a case, etc and its painful. Sometimes fancy cars like BMWs etc too get parked which might be OK for a short while, but still it causes "mande bisi" (head-ache). Anytime there is a such a fancy car, I make it point to ask our daily wage working city council workers if its is their car. It invariably brings a smile on their faces at the thought of the implication🤣
- Now that the above background is done, we heard a sound late time in one of the parking spots but did not pay too much attention to it. Next day morning this beaten dinosaur of a car is parked there. As usual needed to wait for a short bit for the car to move.
- Minutes turned into hours to tens of hours to few days. Still no movement of the car. Now the suspicion had set in. Minute by minute checking for the presence of somebody approaching the direction was conducted. Asked some random people too. Frustrating of course.
- About the second day, I used the govt vehicle database (parivahan) to check for the owner. The name can be kinda guessed, came to know it does not have a Fitness certificate and is 30 years old. The doubt is that if it has been sold and the paper work not transferred, the car will still be registered in the original owner's name. So it might not lead to the true owner.
- Around the 5th day, went around all the roads nearby asking if they had seen the car by showing them a picture because there is possibility that some new neighbourhood ran out of parking space. They definitely must have thought it was a crazy idea. But still no success.
- Interestingly I have a new phone and it has a 50MP camera. Was photographing the inside of the car, I saw a visiting card. Tried the normal phone camera capture mode, it was focussing more on the window rather than the visiting card. Luckily the phone has a pro-mode where one can choose manual focus. Using that even though not so clear could make out the name of an Engineering Fabricator and I put the name on Google and it gave me a location about a couple of kms from my house. Below is a picture of the visiting card through the glass.
- After the door to door asking proved futile I decided to go the Fabricator, maybe this car owner could be client of his or know him etc. I wanted to go and meet him in person maybe he will remember more else with this social media thing nobody pays any attention even to serious stuff.
- After I landed up at the location, turns out there was nothing, no Fabricator company. All the Google Maps pictures turned out to be false. But then as usual is my practice, I asked people around, they too could not help but they confirmed that such a place existed recently.
- I finally called the number and somebody answered. I asked him if he knows anybody who has a white car. He was a little perplexed at first. But then I told him what the issue and gave him the car number. He said it is his car and that his car service guy had taken the car for service some 5 days ago and that just today was the day they moved their fabrication place to a new place !! I told him if it had been delayed a little longer he would have had to deal with the police. He said he will get the service guy who had irresponsibly just left the car in some random place to remove the car ASAP.
- Thus the case was solved by some daring detective skills.😎 Trade queries are welcome.
- BTW the opening Merc picture is click bait to make you want to know what the story is 😉 Thank you for making it so far.
