Who moved my car ?

One day, when I was about 13 , we woke up to find Papa looking very sheepish.
After much hooing and hah- ing …he admitted that after a Rum to many at a party ( about a kilometer away from our house ) , he had lost his way , run out of petrol and parked the car ‘safely’ on the side of the road and sauntered home, thinking he would run across in the morning and drive it back
Things didn't quite turn out quite as simple. He had woken up remembering only that he had parked the car ‘somewhere safe, somewhere near the house ’ ( as he kept telling my suitably upset mother) . Exact location , or even approximate location turned out to be minor details that had slipped his mind.
So they went off in search of the car …after half day of driving through every alley within a 5 km radius of our house , they returned. The next logical step was a call to his college friend , now a senior official in the traffic police.
The conversation went so ...

Papa – "Yaar Giru , Kuch kho gaya hai"
Giru - "What Shinu ?credit card? Licence? Car papers ?"
Papa – "Nahi , I’ve misplaced the car"
Giru – Loooong silence followed by guffaws …

Well , being the same fellow who roamed around with Papa in their Bihar college days when the same car had a number called BRA – 1 ( yes , really ) , he set off a search for the car and a few hours later , called to say it had been found and detained at the nearby Police Station

Papa ( who always turned from Roaring tiger to Embarrassed mouse in these situations ) dragged along mama and went to the Police station where the car was in the center of a group of Hawaldars – gingerly staring at ‘The Car That Had Been Abandoned’ from a distance almost waiting for it to explode or something…

Fortunately Giru was high up enough in the police for them to believe that the car had been ‘intentionally parked there , temporarily’ so they were able to drive away without much ado

Needless to say , he never heard the end of this !.

Today is his sixth death anniversary, but thinking of him will always make all who knew him smile, because he lived his life as a college kid …with boundless energy and infectious spontaneity that made sure there was never a dull moment around him
We love you !