Hero for the day

Para-rumpumpum! Witness my chest swell out in pride (and bra padding) at my new found status as advocate for justice. Yours trurly has saved a mortal today and by golly, her head is feeling bigger than a hot air balloon right now.

I had to hop over to a department store today to buy my mother a hat, to be taken to Egypt tomorrow ( I still can't believe I'm going... whee... but that is not what the blog is about.). 'Hop' would be a gross underestimation of what one can do when it comes to shopping these days. The avurudu season dictates that all forms of human life will convene like a herd of cattle at every shop in Colombo to the point that one can't breathe, let alone hop. And that is not what the blog is about either. (admit it... you are starting to become very frustrated, aren't you?)

SO I hopped... and I'd just parked my car outside the store and was walking towards it, when I noti two teen boys, shabbily dressed in that typical 'I-dont-give-a-f***' way circling around another parked car and sniggering to themselves. I wouldn't have given a f*** either, had it not been for a passing trishaw driver who stuck his head out and shouted 'thieves!' at them. Their startled looks and suspicious giggles as they moved away from the car made me wonder if the two were actually up to no good. I kept walking, as did they, passing me and entering the shop I was headed to. The fact that they hadn't previously looked like they were going shopping, or that they seemed a little to interested in the people at the shop more than the clothes made my antennae go up, and I continued to keep an eye on them as much as I could.

As expected, the store was teeming with people of all shapes, sizes and smells. When you are in a store that crowded, you have no option BUT to notice the smells. Getting up a flight of stairs felt like the biblical exodus, and it was all I could do to keep myself from being shoved unceremoniously off the staircase to my untimely death. Later, I will blog a rant about the uncouth manners (or lack thereof) of Sri Lankans in a clothing store during a sale. It was like a puddle of water in the bloody african savannah during a drought.

My quest for Mummy's hat led me (or rather, jostled me) towards the men's section, where the hats were. Whilst being thrown in all directions by the overwhelming crowd of avurudu shoppers, I spied the same two sniggering boys a little way ahead of me. My eyes nearly popped out when I witnessed them picking a man's pocket, right smack in the middle of the store with everyone around. The store was SO crowded, and yet not a single person saw the crime except, for my luck, me. Interestingly enough, it was at that very moment that the shop PA system warned shoppers to be aware of their personal belongings.

It was a work of art. One of the boys distracted a man by asking him something, while the other silently picked the man's pocket. Oliver Twist, local style. I couldn't believe what I was watching. The crowds and the jostling was so bad that the man would never have felt his wallet being taken out.

At first I just watched numbly, not sure whether to react, just in case I'd been mistaken about what I saw. I had, after all, walked in with the pre-conceived notion that these two guys were thieves, so my mind could just very well have conjured the whole thing up, because it gets a bit mental like that at times (again, another blog you'd surely love to read).
The boys moved off and passed me on their way out of the mens' section, giving each other sneaky winks and looks. I was too busy fighting for my last breath to even move in their direction, just to confirm to myself that they had taken the wallet.

At that point, the man who they'd picked it from started shouting that his wallet was missing. Again, amazingly, none of the thousands of people in that room seemed to care. The man desprately called one of the shop assitants and claimed his wallet had been lifted and tried explaining his predicament. All the while, the two hooligans were making a silent getaway amongst the crowd.

I needed to do something. Anything. But my damn brain just refused to work and give me words to shout out, informing the owner that I saw the culprits. I was quite a distance away from him, and the only way would have been to shout... but shout WHAT, goddamit? In it's excited state, my mind drew a complete and utter blank. So... without words coming to me, I just animatedly jumped up and down, waving my arms in the air like a retard, screaming "Arhhh...arhhhh", just so that the man would notice me.

He noticed... as did the shop assistant and the several other shoppers who were squeezing the life out of me. The boys were getting away down the stairs, albeit (and thankfully) slowly due to the crowds. "Arhh" wasn't telling the owner who the boys were and language was failing me. I panicked and did the only thing that came into my head.

I turned around and jumped onto them.

Bodily. Physically. Jumped onto the skinny guy descending the stairway. The force (my body ain't light) knocked him off his feet, onto the man in front of him and for a moment we almost played human dominoes on the stairs, until someone clutched onto the banister for dear life and stopped the mass topple. The owner and shop assistant turned up and gingerly picked me up off the squirming culprit and another shop assitant at the floor below us caught thief no.2 when I pointed to him slinking away unnoticed.

For the next half-hour, the scoundrels were drilled and searched by security and I was used as key witness. They found the wallet in the second boy's baggy pockets, and I was a hero. The owner of the wallet kept thanking me profusely, making me feel all good about myself as well as terribly embarrased at the same time. The shop assitants kept describing my little stunt to their colleagues like it was something out of an action movie, when in reality, I'd probably looked like a daft fool clinging onto a teenage boy half my size. After a few minutes of listening to the praise, I just wanted to get out of there and escape the stares. Plus I didn't want to hang around until the police showed up, because Sri Lanka's police force bugs me and I didn't have the time or patience to go through their inane procedures. I excused myself and left, after I'd done my bit by telling the tale a zillionth time to whoever wanted it for posterity's sake.

The owner wouldn't let me go until he'd paid for my shoping, as an expression of his gratitude. I tried my best to get out of that one, but he snatched mum's hat from my hands and paid the cashier for it and kept making me feel bad that I had a problem with it. I thanked him, and whizzed out of the store.

So there you have it. My deed of the day... yet another story to tell the cats about. I am now the proud owner of a free hat and a damn good feeling.