[Surprise]

Around 10 of our friends went for a trip to Yercaud. I had all the cash collected from the guys in my wallet. We went for a hotel to have our breakfast & we waited patiently after ordering the same. A guy was engaged in a heated argument with the hotel supervisor and staffs for some goof up. We went there to settle that off & spend around 10 minutes. Suddenly I realized I had kept my wallet on the table itself....I rushed to the spot & found it was lying there with 500 rupees bunch clearly exposed. What a relief

Originally Posted by esteem_lover

Frantically searched everywhere and could not find,

Been there many times..could relate how that feels at that point of time

[esteem_lover]

Originally Posted by slipstream

When the inspector had gone to the fruit stall to enquire, our man was sitting on a heap of fruits with the stolen blackberry in his hand

What impressed me most was not just the speed in which they managed to trace the phone but also the fact that they refused to accept a single pie from me for their efforts and also politely declined my offer to treat them to lunch.

The inspector told me that the smile on my face was worth the efforts that he had taken. I was spell bound. TN Police. RESPECT !

That is like a dream ending Jai. RESPECT. Me too.

[S2!!!]

Part.1

A friend and I were travelling to college one early morning around 2 years ago by cab. We were late as usual and had a presentation in college and I was tensed and was doing some last minute prep while my friend was busy chatting up with the cabbie. Their frivolous conversation made the cabbie go over a stretch of bad roads a bit too quickly as his attention wasn't on the road 100% due to which I heard a sound of some metal object near me but did not pay much attention to it. Reached our destination and the two new friends bid good bye to each other.

Part.2

I reach home and check my pockets and to my horror my house key was missing and I was locked outside. Checked my bag, called my friends and asked them to check if by mistake it may have slipped in their bags but no luck. I realised that the metal sound in the cab could have been nothing else but my key falling out of my pocket. I called that very friend and told him the story and to keep an eye for his new friend (cabbie) on the road althogh I expected nothing from this guy (had described the key-chain to him very properly).

Part.3

Its almost a month and I had given up the hope of getting the key back. In fact I had almost forgotten about it. My friend called me out of the blue and said, "guess what??" He tells me that that morning he caught a cab and it was the same cabbie who was driving. The cabbie recognized him and asked him whether he knew anything about the key to which he saw and realised that it was my key and took it back happily.

It is quite miraculous that a 15 minute conversation lasted in the mind of the cabbie for a month and he remembered my friend almost very well. I am grateful to the cabbie for giving back my belonging (although I still don't know the cab number nor his face).

[vipulbatta]

This is more of a "not really lost"but found.
Happened about 5 years back. Wife and I had gone to Coonoor and on evening decided to go to the market. Parked the car at a slightly dark place and went to the shopping area. While returning back, suddenly my wife realized she does not have her purse with her! We start hunting for it, retracing our path, going to all the shops again, but did not find it.

Did a quick mental inventory of the missing items and its mainly just debit card and credit cards, with about 1K Rs. So, we get into the car and I start driving to the hotel while wife calls the banks to block all the cards and re-issue fresh ones with whatever charges the banks have.

We reach the hotel and while getting off the car, wife sees her purse fallen right next to her seat, stuck in the gap between the seat and the door!!

[Ice]

The Curious Case of the Friendly Trucker

For 8 months between January and August 2008, I had a rather unique commute on Fridays and Mondays. The missus and I were expecting our first child, and she chose to spend her entire confinement period at the in-laws. Cursed with an irrational fear of said in-laws cornering me at midnight with a wooden crucifix and a silver bullet, I chose to visit my wife every weekend, but stay at my parents' house, a mere 5 kms. away.

Back to the commute - I would leave work at 4.30 PM every Friday and get to my parents' house by 11 PM that night. I'd then don the face-paint for two days and act like a responsible father-to-be, leaving for work at 5 AM on Monday and getting in at 10. The long commute on Fridays and Mondays can be attributed to the fact that I (we) live in Bangalore, and our parents live in Madras.

So here I was, driving home on the first Friday of February. Around 9.30 PM, I pulled up at my usual Dhaba near the Raniper tollbooth for a quick cup of tea and a cigarette. I was driving my Palio 1.3MJD then, newly serviced. True to form, Prerana Motors went the extra mile and re-focused my headlamps, helpfully, with the end result that the right lamp illuminated tree tops and the odd startled truck driver on the opposite side of the road, and the left one studiosly threw light on the 5 feet of road service road alongside me. I used the short break (and the stout brick wall of the dhaba) to re-focus the headlamps to my liking.

That done, I resumed my journey and reached the Sriperumbudur toll booth at 10.45 PM. I was stuck behind a trucker from Orissa who was in the right-most lane at the booth. The trucker appeared to be negotiating a purchase of NH-7 itself, as he was caught up in an animated discussion with the toll booth attendant. After 5 minutes, I'd had enough of his behavior, and half-stepped out of the car to voice my displeasure. The trucker behind me also yelled out his support for the cause.

I paid the toll with some loose change lying around in the cupholder, and reached home in 3 quarters of an hour. Upon parking, I found my precious brown wallet MISSING. Gone. Vanished from it's safe highway seat - the door pocket. I'd last seen it at the Ranipet toll. Which left me with 3 possibilities:
a. Dropped at dhaba
b. Dropped en-route
c. Swallowed by uneven Palio panels

I quickly wrote off b and c as non-possibilities, as I hadn't stopped anywhere save for the Dhaba. Cursing Prerana Motors and my ciggie addiction, I drove back to the Dhaba - a small matter of 120 km. The owner of the Dhaba, a kindly turbaned Sardar who had lived in Tamil Nadu since his father came down after the Anti-Sikh riots in the early '80s, assiduously searched for it with his high-powered flashlight, but to no avail. He vouched for his staff, but admitted that a visitor could have made off with the wallet quite easily. I thanked him for his efforts and started the long drive back home after calling my bank and canceling my plastic.

I spent much of the next morning moping about at home, utterly disappointed at losing something so valuable. I wished evil things upon the person who'd found it. I lamented the total lack of honesty and decency in our country, and kept imagining all the saintly things I would have done if I'd found someone's wallet lying around. Around noon, I received a call from the security at my office in Bangalore enquiring whether I'd lost my wallet. Seems someone had found it and called the office after noting the number on my business card. I jumped across the ether and kissed the man for bearing such good news and took down the number of the good samaritan.

Here's the kicker. He wasn't just a good samaritan. He was a great one. He restored my faith in humanity, and reminded me that a significantly large proportion of this world's population are inherently good people. Remember the trucker behind me at the Sriperumbudur toll booth? The one who supported my call for a quick end to the Orissa trucker's conversation with the toll booth attendant? Well, he'd noticed that I'd knocked my wallet out of the door pocket while doing the half step out of the car, and had picked it up with the intention of giving it to me while I paid the toll a few feet ahead. However, since I had the correct change for the toll, my stop was quick. And I mean F1 pitstop quick. So, he couldn't reach me before I peeled away from the toll booth. He did the next best thing - call the number on my business card.

What is astonishing here is his nature. I had the kind of cash which could have been his monthly salary in my wallet. I (or anyone else) had no idea that he had my wallet. And he still returned it and refused to accept a reward.

It's people like this trucker who keep this country going.

[BulZire]

Would you really believe if i tell that my wife's one ear stud was missed in Sharma travels on her travel to the native from Bangalore and it was returned back to us by the office in the same day evening. Yes, it happened a couple of years back.

She got to know the stud missing only after reaching the home, i immediately called the Sharma office and told about it. An hour later the staff called to tell that it was just lying under the seat where she was sitting and asked us to collect it from them on her return journey .

[honeybee]

This thread reminds me of my own experience of Lost and Found, and in true Manmohan Desai fashion it was not the baggage but people. Brothers, you could say.

It happened many years ago when I was still in school as four of us, my parents, me and my kid brother, travelled to Chennai. We stayed at a lodge near the station (Hotel De Kerala was its name if I remember it correctly). Near the station still involved a few minutes of walking.

At the end of our stay (which included a chess tournament in which my brother played, the customary Tirupathi darshan and a sight-seeing in/around Chennai, the day of our departure dawned. As my mom insisted on getting some idli breakfast packed, we went to the hotel we frequented regularly and asked for the packed breakfast. Meanwhile father decided to hire a rickshaw (cycled, not auto) and carry all our luggage to the station. We three were supposed to catch up.

As soon as the breakfast was ready we collected it and hired another rickshaw to reach the station. The train was to leave at 7:05am (it was the Chennai express), and it was hardly fifteen minutes to seven. As we left the rickshaw, we searched for my father in the crowd. He was nowhere to be seen. My mother then asked me to go ahead and locate him while they would pay off the rickshaw and follow me. I entered the station and after a minute or so found my father waiting for us with the baggage. A few more minutes passed and there was no sign of my mom and kid brother. It was hardly a few minutes left for the train to leave. Finally father asked me to wait by the baggage and went in search for them. Just as the train was about to leave, he returned with the bad news: They were nowhere to be found!

We were shaken as the train finally moved out of the station at the right time, leaving us stranded with all our baggage and two missing people. On top of that we didn't know a single word of Tamil or any other South Indian language. Hindi and broken English was all we could manage. Father then went the whole length of the platform and back, but no sign of the two.

Finally after about half an hour of waiting we concluded they must have missed us and boarded the train. After all there wasn't much else we could hope for. We started looking for options. Father ordered me to wait by the luggage and not move an inch as he went from pillar to post, getting new tickets, enquiring about the next available train and most importantly about an announcement to be made. He intended the announcement for my mom and brother asking them to continue their journey and we would meet them at Kalyan where we were to disembark. But here again, the station master said they could not make any announcements on our behalf.

Finally with a heavy heart and shoulders (since we carried all the bags, including the packed breakfast and every single item of baggage - all the bedsheets, spare clothes and everything), we boarded the Madras Mail. Luckily we could obtain confirmed reservations and had company in the form of two other players whom we had met during the tournament.

The day wore on, finally coming to a close and we dozed off in the train. It was more out of exhaustion as I had lost all interest in the goings on. I didn't even eat any of the food, since I knew my brother and mom didn't have anything with them, only my mom was carrying her purse and carried some money with her.

As I woke out of the sleep, I looked out of the window and realized the train was slowing down. It continued chugging along slowly. It then ground to a halt. After a few minutes it moved again and after a painful slumber through the rails it finally reached the Solapur station. As it pulled into the station we realized from the remarks of the other passengers that it was out of the schedule and it had already lost a lot of time just waiting. So typical of the Indian Railways.

As it pulled up, having nothing better to do I peered out of the window on the other side, which looked over the platform. Glancing through the objects and people on the platform I noticed another train standing on the other side of the platform. Casually my eyes went to the nameplate and I saw it was "Chennai Express". I turned around and remarked to my father, "Look, here's the Chennai Express returning from Mumbai". Hearing that my father was alarmed. He quickly replied, "No, it might be the one from Chennai to Mumbai, delayed and halted here. Quick, check if you can see your brother!". I jumped down and rushed to the door, only to see my brother's face peering out from behind the window in front of us.

I ran out of our train, across the platform, yelling to my brother. He and mom quickly spotted me, hurriedly got up from their seats and disembarked. And just as we turned around and started walking back to our train, the Chennai Express moved. It all was over in a matter of a few seconds and we were reunited.

We then opened the breakfast boxes and heartily swallowed the stale idlis.

That's one lost and found experienced in real life!

[honeybee]

Sorry for the back to back posts, but I really thought the first Lost and Found incident narrated by me should be left untouched. Mods, please merge the two if you think otherwise.

This was before I bought my first car, as my uncle and I went on a road trip to Bangalore. It was a marriage to attend and no train reservations to be had, so we jumped into the Santro (the same one I later owned for four years!) and off we went.

We stayed at a relative's place, attended the marriage, went on a three-day tour of Mysore and Ooty and at the end of the week started the return journey. As while going to Bangalore, we made the night's halt at Kolhapur, Hotel Rajat. Next day morning we packed up and left. Just as we joined the highway my auntie exclaimed, "Did you pick up the camera?". I was driving and the question was clearly aimed at my uncle. He said he didn't know anything about the camera.

Aunti searched the handbag and purse in which she said she had kept the camera. It wasn't there. Uncle asked her where she had kept it and she said she thought she had kept it on the dressing table in the hotel room. There it goes. After much discussion we halted by a telephone booth and called up the hotel. Half an hour had already gone by and if any staff had picked it up while checking / cleaning the rooms, they had had enough time to either report it to the desk or pocket it.

The telephone call was fruitless, as the desk person had someone check the room and confirmed that there was no camera in the room. Now frantic discussions ensued. While auntie insisted on turning around and going back to the hotel to investigate things personally, uncle and I were in no mood to turn around. Finally uncle promised to check on it in his next visit to Kolhapur (since he frequented the hotel), and we were on our way.

I drove to my residence and we all had tea before uncle took over the wheel and they left for their home. In the evening I received a call from them. I expected to hear they had reached home, but was surprised to hear not only that, but they had also found the camera.

It so happened that the camera (it was a point and shoot one) had been left on the rear parcel tray the previous day, and somehow slipped off it and into the luggage compartment when we unloaded some of the bags at the hotel. So it remained in the luggage compartment, blissfully unaware of the problems its disappearance caused.

The topping on the pizza, or icing on the cake as it may be called, was that the camera was without film. My uncle had forgotten to load film into it.