The case of the mysterious white box

I, Jayashree,(read: lazy blogger) have been forced to forget the blogging hiatus I had planned and come up with a new post. (Waiting for the cheers and claps to subside.) I am blessed. God has made things happen which are meant for blogging. Situations stare at me in the face and say, ‘Blog me. I was made for you.’ Now, how can I refuse? I wake up, don my armour, mentally prepare myself and take a deep breath.

I pick up my pen and begin writing.

A brief introduction of the character around which this article is centered: Ms X, my lovely neighbour. My lovely neighbour with an observant eye. My lovely, observant neighbour who gossips and is nosy. My lovely, observant, gossipy, nosy neighbour.
That should set the ground for me to continue.

Well, she isn’t exactly my neighbour. She lives in another row, the one just behind ours. Sometimes I go for a short walk, meet my neighbours, etc. A few days back I passed her house and there she was!

‘What’s up, Jayashree?’
(Bracing myself for an interrogative session.) ‘Um, nothing.’
And yes, she proceeded to ask me a million questions on my actions and movements in the past few days (That is, since the last time I met her. She has to keep updating the database, you see.)

‘Did your whole family go off to sleep that day at 9:30?’
‘Huh? Which day?’
‘I don’t know. (Was amazed to hear that she hadn’t made a written note of the day, time, hour, minute, second and the position of the stars.)
‘Well, I don’t know either.’
(Thought a little. Decided it was probably last Sunday when I’d been ill. Though I have no idea why everyone went off to sleep at 9:30. Told her that. ‘Aah’, she said. One answer got. One missing data no more.

‘Which room do you sleep in?’
‘Huh?’
‘The one near the road?’
(Taken aback.) ‘No’.
‘I heard the fan whirring in your room that evening as I passed by so I knew you were sleeping.’
(Oh, my GOD.)
(Still keeping a straight face and remaining patient.): ‘That wasn’t me.’
‘Oh. I take a round in the evening with my son. I see your mother open the fridge after dinner and keep pickles and stuff. Sometimes you’re in your room, sometimes you’re not.’
‘I saw you walking there the other day. You seemed dressed up to go somewhere.’

(Felt like I was being questioned regarding a crime. ‘I need an alibi. I’m innocent. I’ve done nothing’, my brain told me. Shrugging, I said, ‘Auntie, I’ve to go. Bye.’
‘Will you go back this way or that way?’ (One’s shorter than the other.)
‘Um, that way. (Pointing at the longer one.)
‘Why?’
‘Just like that.’ (Smiled a silly smile. It always helps to give a silly smile. And giggle, if possible. People don’t cross-question you after that. Maybe they’re too afraid you’ll do it again.)

This was a few days back. I came back home, had a good laugh and forgot about it. I wouldn’t have thought about it (her behaviour was nothing unusual for her, honestly) if she hadn’t appeared today. This time she encountered my mom. I was in, listening to music and she and Mom were chatting outside our gate.

‘Who’s that boy in Jayashree’s bedroom?’
Only a silhouette was visible. ‘Oh, that’s Jayashree’, my mom said.
‘That looks like a boy’, she said, probably thinking that my mom had lied and would break down on cross-questioning.
‘That’s her.’
She looked hard and decided to take my mom’s word for it.

‘Why didn’t you have dinner today at 9? You always have dinner at 9, I see you everyday. (We had made the grave mistake of having dinner that day at 9:15, that too, without informing her.)
‘Uh, I don’t know. Didn’t see the time.’
(I’d never observed that we generally have dinner at 9. I suppose everyone wraps his/her work at about 9 and goes for dinner.)

(Now, the award winning question.)

‘What’s that white box you keep in the fridge every night after dinner?’
‘What? Which white box?’
‘The one you keep in every night. Do you keep pickles in it?’
(Mom, totally puzzled): ‘I don’t know.’
(Now sure that my Mom is hiding something and that something sinister is going on.)
‘You know; that white box…’
‘Uh, some food I guess.’
(Giving up.) Oh.

As soon as the conversation was over my mom rushed to the fridge and opened it to find the mysterious box. (Horror music in the background.) There is no white box…

‘Jayashree, come here.’
I walk up to the refrigerator. ‘See? Tell me; which is the white box I keep in every night?’
‘You keep a white box in every night?’
‘I really don’t know. She told me so. She can’t have made a mistake. You think I’ve begun to forget things?’
‘Ha, ha. You know what she’ll tell people?’
‘What?’
‘That she asked you many times what you kept in that white box and you refused to tell her. Oh, ha ha ha.’

Aah, I haven’t laughed that hard for ages. The other day I saw an ad in the newspaper for private detectives. With people like her, who needs them? In fact, I’d recommend her name for a teacher’s post in a training school for detectives. The world needs people like her to ferret out criminals and crimes. We need more people to observe people doing suspicious things everyday, like putting food in the fridge, switching on their fan, etc. Who knows? There might be a terrorist hand behind these seemingly innocent activities. Thanks to people like her, the world is a safer place for us all.