Literally. I woke up this morning to find one random drunk guy lying drunk in my garden, making random noises. I tried to? shout trying to wake him up so that he would go. But to no avail.
He had been first sighted last night at around ten o’clock. He was lying in front of my neighbor’s house. Groaning. I remember taking special care to make sure all gates were locked. I had also been slightly relieved – that he was in front of my neighbors’ house and not mine. So it was their job to do the clean-up act.
Later in the night he had apparently gained entry into my neighbor’s compound. They had tried to chase him away but to no avail. They’d dialed 100 (at 3 am) but no cops arrived. And sometime in the middle of the night he had scaled the walls to enter our compound.
It took some 3 calls to 100. Each time a lady would pick up, ask what the problem was, and then take down my full address (though I thought “opposite upendra’s house” was a better indicator of the location of my house than the postal address). And then say that the cops would be there in 15 mins. On the third call, the lady was like “oh so he’s still lying around? i’ll send the cops”. Maybe she’d assumed that the situation would take care of itself and precious police resources needn’t be wasted on this! Maybe she’d assumed the same when my neighbor called her at 3am.
There was a call from the “south control room” when a polite policeman confirmed our address and location and said that the cops would be in in 5 mins. This time the promise was kept. A couple of policemen arrived on a “cheetah” and started poking around this guy with a stick. Thankfully he was alive. and then they managed to beat him till he woke up and he was sent off.
The policemen told me that this unresponsiveness of the control room was a common occurrence and henceforth we should just get in touch with the police station directly.
On the whole a mildly scary experience??