I had come home after my EM lectures at Achievers. After a groveling 6 hour study session I came home completely famished and exhausted. My aunt and cousin sister had come over. I was goofing around in our garden after lunch. My aunt, sister and cousin were in my room watching the lame wedding/bridal show "Subasiri". Feeling tired after a long day, I decided I should take my siesta and went into my room for a nap. Thathi (dad) was happily sleeping on Ammi's (mom) bed. It was tea time, about 4 in the afternoon.
I soon nodded off. After the show was over, my aunt and cousin had decided that it was time to go home. Ammi was in her room stirring thathi up from his slumber. My aunt, cousin and sister were in the living room, when my sister saw a guy walking, towards our gate, in our garden. He had a white cap on, gray T shirt, check shorts and rubber slippers. He was about my sister's height, 5'5, wore a silver necklace and was of a very dark complexion. My sister, confused at first, though it was our neighbor who had come over to our place but she soon realized that the person in our own garden was a trespasser who was up to no good. Nangi (sis) initially choked, but managed to get the words "hora" (thief) out. This spurred my aunt who bellowed at the top of her lungs, waking thathi up and bringing our entire congregation (except me) into the living room.
The moment my sis and aunt began shouting, the perpetrator picked up his pace, and quoting my sis "placed one arm on our wall, stepped twice on the wall to leap over it onto the road." Even to now, my cousin and sister who witnessed this keep repeating how this guy executed this miraculous feat of athleticism. All this commotion roused me from my sleep. I heard Ammi shout"Kawda kawda !!!" (Who is it !!). Waking up, I realized that something was wrong. My aunt and sister were shouting "Horek horek !!! " I immediately sprung out of bed, grabbed my grandfather's baton, I keep behind my mirror (just for such occasions) and ran out of the room. All my family members were in the garden and the gate was open. Realizing what had happened, I ran out of the house in a dead sprint hoping to chase down, whoever who walked in uninvited to my home !!!
On coming out onto the main road, that stretches for about 100 meters, I saw no one in sight. Despite this, I kept running, my dad and neighbor at my tail. I ran all the way to the main road and looked around feverishly, but there was no one in sight. My sis had blurted the description of the perpetrator as soon as my dad and I had come out. Coming to the top of the road, I realized that there was no way that anyone could have run out of sight so quickly. I turned around and ran back home while thathi and my neighbor went to scour the vicinity. By this time, all my neighbors were out in the street, brandishing iron bars, machetes and staves.
They all came to our place, and observed footprints on the ground where the theif had jumped from the wall to our garden. There were skid marks on the ground when he took off for that epic leap off our garden wall. Just then my neighbor (this is someone else, my neighbor to the south) who lives in the tallest building in our lane opened her fiber glass windows and said she had seen the perpetrator. She was too scared to cry out and call us. She hissed what she had witnessed to the party that was gathered at my place. She had seen the very same guy, jumping out of a balcony in another lane, onto the roof of one of my neighbors and then to another finally coming to our garden wall, when he jumped into our garden and made for a leap out our garden wall.
Despite our frantic efforts to search for him, he did eventually evade us. Thathi and my neighbors, even went to the extent of going around Nugegoda (the city I live) in their motorcycles in hopes of finding the guy. After making entries at the Police Station, Thathi came home with a jeep of policemen. Apparently this dude, had been gallivanting around our lane on the pretext of picking flowers to go to temple. When he had observed a balcony accompanying a wall, he had kept his flower basket (which was later found by my hoodies) down and scaled a 7 foot wall to get into a balcony. He had pried open a cupboard and rifled through jewelry cases in a room where a girl was sleeping. Her waking up and catching him off guard had spooked him to jump out of the balcony onto my neighbors roof.
He had managed to escape, NOT by running down the road as I expected him to do (thus my futile sprint down my lane waving a baton over my head) but by climbing over another wall and jumping from wall to wall until he got away safely. Some parkour expert he must be !!! Nevertheless what surprised us was the tenacity and cool this guy displayed, even when he was discovered on someone else's property. I on the other hand, was shivering, partly out of fright and partly out of rage caused by adrenaline. But this guy, was such a cool customer, that he did not even turn to look in the direction of my aunt and sis when the yelled out. He only focused on making the leap, and keeping his face averted from witnessing eyes.
This guy should be one of the luckiest guys in the world. Had he jumped into my garden 10 minutes sooner, he would have been trapped between me and an angry father of a 21 year old girl. Had he slipped during his scaling of our wall, he would have surely broken his back.Had Thathi or I seen his face, we would have tracked him down from any crook and nanny of Nugegoda.
Everyone at home is terrified. I guess nangi and cuz should be terrified most of all. They had just finished watching Amityville Horror, when they saw a real life crook waltz his way over our garden wall. It was terrifying, yet exhilarating experience. After all I was wondering, when in the world I was going to use my baton on someone.
funny :)
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