The Raid! – Part 3 (Bottom Line)

I could not afford to get all my bags checked. I had five pieces of luggage. Two suit cases on the loft, one suitcase below my table: illegal items contained: Multi meter and Soldering gun. Two trolley bags under my bed, one had a CD player and the other my cell phone, the only source of communication to the outside world, since the hostel phones were pathetic and the STD booth in the campus had exorbitant rates. It was a ‘save my cell’ mission. I wouldn’t like to loose my CD player too as it was the only source of entertainment and music was the only inoculation to my glum mood. I had to come up with something concrete. I had an English Movie CD in my drawer.
If I would give him something that would satisfy him, he might not check all my bags.
With this assumption, I acquiesced when he asked me if I possessed any CDs or cell phones. I took out my drawer key and opened the draw and handed him the movie CD.
I looked at him once and then looked down abashed. I was hoping he falls for the trick. I looked at him from the corner of my eye; I could see what I wanted to see. His eyes showed the sense of achievement and just to make things went smoothly, I offered to open a suitcase that was on the loft, before he could reply I opened it, it had nothing but a few clothes and an encyclopedia CD, he took that CD too. His face gleaming with pride, he took the two CD and put then in a cover and asked me to write my name, I did that immediately. He still stood there, it was now or never, I had to make my move before the other raiders joined the party. The other raiders were checking my room mates.
I mustered up the courage and asked him, “Can I leave now? ”.
“Yes”, he said and I hurried away from there, leaving my drawer key near my bed. That ‘yes’ was the word that would finish this nightmare. I walked past the other rooms as fast as I could, before he could call me again. I went to the lobby towards the way out.
Many eyes were staring at me and I could see the question marks on their pupils. I gave a broad smile, and said “Nothing caught”, and leapt out of the hostel gates and made my way through the college building to my class to announce my triumph.
I was very lucky as i made my way out without getting my cell phone seized. There were many who weren’t that lucky, their phones seized and placed in a plastic bag and kept in the office. They had to go through the rigmarole get it back.
My friend who owned one of the talkies saw this coming and wrapped all his CDs’ in a plastic bag and dumped it in a bucket of water, the night before. He placed his dirty clothes in the water to prevent suspicion. He didn’t loose any of his CDs’, but poor chap couldn’t do that to his hard disk drive and neither did he delete the movies, so his computer got confiscated. Another friend of mine saved his skin, thanks to the ignorance of the raider who just couldn’t figure out that a metallic notebook like structure was capable of playing and storing movies. I felt like a refugee that day and that incident would always remain in my memory lane.
This was the first raid, and unfortunately not the last.