Some People are MAD

Close to midnight on Sunday, I received a call from Sangeetha, a close friend who now rents the apartment that RK and I use to live in until about 6 months ago. She said there was a lady with a police officer who came to her house looking for RK. The lady told Sang that it was a case of car collisions and that our car had bumped her car and now she wanted revenge. Sang, being very wise and street-smart, told them that she couldn't get in touch with the previous renters, that she would contact the landlord and have him get in touch with us. And promptly called us to warn us of imminent bad news, as soon as they left.

My first reaction was one of outright fear. Police! Looking for us! Shit, and we hadn't changed our address on the license plate, which is why they went to the old house and now they would fine us for that! And though I couldn't recall RK bumping into anyone's car in particular, who knew? Perhaps he had broken something major and this woman was Out To Get Him.

RK, on the other hand, was rather sanguine. Bumped a car? Oh well, couldn't be helped, he supposed, he did have a habit of "kissing cars" while parallel parking. Police? Well, the woman probably hadn't given them a choice. What else was a police man supposed to do when accosted by a woman who brought him tales of wrong doing? Fine for not changing address? Well, how much could it be anyway? Now, he really needed to get back to his TV show, so would I please calm down?

I couldn't sleep that night. I tossed and turned and got out of bed many times to look out of the window to check that our car was still on the street and hadn't been towed away. The next day, still in a state of fear, I went online to change our address with the PA Dept of Transportation and also paid all outstanding parking tickets and miscellaneous fines (yes, we accumulate a lot of them. No, we aren't proud of that fact.)

RK called the woman (she had left her phone number with Sang the previous night) and am glad to say, started to get a bit more serious about the whole thing after the conversation. He really couldn't recall bumping any cars the previous day. Sure, he had parked on that street, but he rather thought that the timings were off. He told her he would call her back after work and spent the rest of the day, in the middle of patient consultations and minor surgeries, to ponder about the places and times he had parked his car the previous day.

He met her that evening, confident with his defense. He had a mental list of the places he had parked at and was pretty sure he hadn't done anything particularly malignant. She told him that, in addition to examining her car, she had examined his and could prove that the scratches on her car matched his. Therefore, she seemed to suggest, we dun it. And, of course, "Oh, this didn't happen on Sunday. It happened on Friday", she said.

Well, that flummoxed RK. For him to remember something that happened more than a few hours ago is a Herculean task. To ask him to recall on Monday where he parked on
Friday is too much to expect.

She went on, "And you might see the police in the near future- I filed a hit and run case with them against you"

Huh??!!

And then, the killer: apparently this woman is so jobless as to write down the license plate numbers of the car in front and behind hers EVERY time she parks and checks her car for scratches EVERY time she pulls out. She produced her little black book. And at that, what could RK do? He capitulated. Clearly, this woman deserved some reward for being so assiduous. If he had to be the one who would reward her for her investigations into car scratches and such, then so be it. Someone had to. With a feeling akin to awe and wonder, he produced his insurance documents (thank God we had remembered to renew that insurance!) and came back home to spread the word of this lady and her deeds.
I asked him, "What about the hit and run?"
He said, "Oh, she said she'd withdraw the case"

What a nut this lady is! She is clearly paranoid and neurotic and needs to get a hobby other than examining her car for ridiculously small scratches. I really don't understand people who are so enamored with their scraps of metal that they make a huge hue and cry about a scratch or a bump. So what? At least it wasn't you who was scratched or bumped! Put some paint or a sticker over the thing, and there! Problem solved!

And to go about filing cases against the police, to charge a hit and run against us for such a minor thing! Don't these police have better things to do? Instead, they spend their time persecuting innocent people who are too busy saving lives (well, not me) or working hard to worry about scratching cars- theirs or anybody else's.

Hit and run. Huh. People get confused between human beings and inanimate objects in this country.