Our great castle robbery
Itall seemed so easy. Maybe too easy. Come to think of it, all the two boys had to do was to work their way into the good books of one of our better-known families. Blame the weeds, if you will, for running wild all over the estate where the old man lived. He was the Remainder Theorem of a once noble family who needed help to clean the undergrowth.
There was a time, in the olden days when folks loved the romance of castles. They are scattered all over our station: Katesar Castle, Connaught Castle, Grey Castle, Castle Hill Estate and Whytbank Castle.
My 1929 map of Landour and Mussoorie, reminds me of the Maharajas, both big and small, who had homes up here: Heights, summer home for Alwar; Airfield in Barlowgunj, once home to the Begums of Bhopal (now a watering-hole for the Nabhas); Padmini Niwas for HH Rajpipla; Kateshwar and Kasmanda, and many others.
Further, beyond the Library, soared the turrets of a French castle – the Chateau. It was the imperial residence of the Kapurthalas, that came to be known for its fancy dress balls; its dinners and its high teas where the tables creaked with food, to be washed down with fire-water.
Down below in Barlowgunj, past Douglas Dale along the bridle path, are Happy Garden, home to the handsome Raja Lal Singh of Punjab.
To one of these homes, repaired the old man like a dinosaur come back to Jurassic Park. There were affairs to attend to. He stood stunned, as if hit by a meteor. His house had been robbed.
I must say our police rose to the occasion.
“A Thai bubble-gum wrapper thrown carelessly. That’s all we had!” recalled Abbal Singh Rawat, the Station House Officer when I met him on his rounds. ‘That was our only clue’.
One step at a time, they made the rounds, checking all the stores selling imported confectionery, smuggled in then no doubt by parents from overseas trying to pay the high school-fee of their children.
‘At a shop outside Kala School, we struck oil!’ remembers the SHO. “As we turned around to leave, the storekeeper recalled that he had seen two boys zooming around on a shiny new motorcycle, buying up entire cases of the same bubblegum.”
When the raiding party knocked on the door, the boys seemed relieved, whimpering: “What took you so long? We’ve been waiting for you. Haven’t slept a wink! The tinkle of anklets from the empty ballroom haunted us, chasing us even in our dreams!”
‘Recovered everything!’ Pleased as punch the SHO told me: ‘They confessed! Had broken in through a door they had earlier left open!’ At midnight, Chowkidar snoring, slipping in, they filled their bags, and all went well until midnight when the ghostly ankle-bells began to ring out in the ballroom down below. That sound would haunt them forever.
Oftener than not, crimes can end up becoming their own punishment.