“A good thief knows that the greatest satisfaction comes not from what is stolen but from outsmarting those who stand in the way.”
This quote from the Art of Theft book reminds me of a theft that we encountered decades ago. I can remember when we had just moved into a rented apartment in Hyderabad, the immediate thing that came to our attention was that there was only one lock for the entrance door. We had our own concerns that the house might be easily accessible to thieves. As I had a toddler with me and would be left alone for most of the day, my husband insisted the owner put an iron grill door and a padlock chain at the entrance. As the landlord was an amicable person, he understood our situation and agreed to our requests.
We usually kept the window near the balcony door open at night for air circulation during the summers. Little did we anticipate that it might cause any trouble. Well! The balcony door gave way to an entrance to the hall, which led to the bedrooms. We slept in one of them, while the other bedroom consisted of a cupboard where we usually keep our valuables and some other kid stuff.
That fateful night, when everyone was fast asleep, I suddenly had the intuition to check whether everything was alright in the house. So I got up and slowly moved to switch on the lights. I moved on to the hall and suddenly saw the balcony door banging and saw a yellow cloth flying in the air. For a moment, I believed that we had forgotten to close the balcony door when we had gone to sleep, and it had banged because of the breeze.
I went again to the bedroom to check with my husband to see if he could remember locking the balcony door the previous night, as it was swinging in the wind that was blowing and banging against the wall. My husband woke up with a shudder and immediately went on to the other bedroom to check on the valuables. What awaited us in the room was quite the sight. The cupboard was open—all the papers and documents in it were strewn around, and cash was missing from the wallet.
We were baffled as to how the thief could have entered the house, as my husband clearly remembered keeping the single upper bolt lock on the balcony door locked. Then, on further investigation, we found out that the burglar had entered our home by unlocking that lock from the nearby window, which we had kept open for air circulation. When we called on our neighbours the next morning, they said that a similar incident had happened in their home also, before we had moved in.
While we were only thinking of fortifying the entrance door, we had least anticipated that the thief would find another weak link in our house security—the window!
Thieves are more alert and smart than we think. If only they can put their intelligence in a productive way which is good for the humanity they can be really a good resource for the nation.
All said and done, always expect the unexpected from thieves!
