Aunty -The Surveillance Cam
They say, “Indian aunties in the neighborhood are better than high definition CCTVs”. I didn’t believe in this until today evening when I had a first-hand experience of it. I go for a walk every evening to keep my sanity intact in the chaos of my post corona world. Well, not without my mask and my headphones. I use the first one hoping that nobody would recognize me and the second one as an amulet against people who try to ask questions or initiate conversations. Until today evening I thought I was Jonna Mendez at disguise (with that mask on, of course). But I was proved wrong. Today evening an aunt from my neighborhood who is 100m away from my house stopped me when I was about to cross the road. She tapped me on my shoulders from behind. I turned around, removed my headphones and said “Ahh, aunty”. And she asked me “Hey, why was there a police car in front of your house around 5pm today”. I was taken aback. It took me a few seconds to register what she was asking. My first thought was “she could see all the way to my House “.Then came her next question “Is there a problem? “ and she grinned at me. In my head I was like “is this woman watching or should I say ‘monitoring my house’. And my second thought was ‘ Oh no! People can recognize me even when I’m wearing a mask’. And I was disappointed to realize that I was Miss Jonna Mendez just in my head, for others I was nothing more than Inspector Clouseau in Pink Panther. Aunty by now was getting impatient. Before she could ‘interrogate’ me further, I waved a bye and walked away.
“Hawk eyes with HD vision” that is what Indian neighborhood aunts are. They see everything, they know everything and in case they don’t, they can cleverly join the missing links and make a new story. And I’m sure by now she would have come up with three or four theories for the ‘ unusual activity ‘ she witnessed in front of my gate. Man! These people could be assets to RAW. And with a little training they could give James Bond a run for his money.
But for the police vehicle, she would be disappointed to know that it had nothing to do with black money, ED or for that matter even an arrest warrant. It was just my uncle visiting us.
