Long story short.
Or long.
Or short.
I was out with my friends to throw the daily trash one night.
We got ready quick, brushed our hair and left with two things:
- a big blue dustbin which can hold 4 days worth of our abandonment
- a jute shopping bag with gently painted stick figures of dancers
in serious haste.
Why the haste you ask?
We are renters by the way.
It was about to be 10 PM and 30 mins after that, our owner will diligently lock the door.
And we’ll have to plead with a big “Let these sinks in!” sign.
All I remember was that we were happy, until …
Daily chores are fun.
But is throwing out trash one of them?
Honestly, it wasn’t exactly our favorite.
Nevertheless, it needed to be done, and done quick.
We had a few client calls to be picked up, and some workouts to be survived.
So we took the road always taken and walked to the big green dumpster waiting for us longingly for its dinner.
We dumped all the trash into Greeny.
A thought crossed us like a sharp breeze, “We need to shop for some vegetables! Now do we let our dustbin tag along with us to the market, or do we go all the way back to our home to put him to rest?”
We had a better idea.
Not as better as we thought, you’ll see soon.
Does the bin come with us?
We didn’t like the idea of our big blue dustbin tagging along.
No we’re not fat-shaming the big dustbin, or being racist towards the blue.
- Dustbins smell. So did ours. No hate.
- Dustbins are heavy. Hard to carry for long.
Just near the dumpster, there was so much grass.
Why can’t we just leave our dustbin in there till we return?
It sounded like a million dollar idea in our head, but in actual it was just the same as leaving your dog in the middle of a grassland by tying it’s leash to a pole and hoping to be back soon.
In all fairness, it sounded so right.
Everything that sounds right, isn’t.
When you tie a dog’s leash to a pole, what happens?
You never imagine that something would go wrong, because:
- Your dog listens to you, would stay put till you’re back.
- Your leash is foolproof. Your dog’s smart.
Not even once it occurs that the problem is, infact, not the dog.
It’s always the people you least suspect.
We buried our dustbin under some little grass we picked up from the ground.
It looked perfect.
We saw two kids who were returning home with their mothers.
One of my friends said, “They saw us. And they were looking for a really long time.”
We said to ourselves, “Should we keep our dustbin at home? I’m not sure of this.”
— “It’ll be alright, let’s go!”
We disregarded that, and jaywalked on to the market.
All was done, but not ‘dust’ed.
We were happy with the vegetables we got.
We got a great deal on the otherwise soaring-high tomatoes, good ol’ ingredient for some good ol’ soup or some comfort spaghetti.
Now it was time to pick our blue dustbin from the artificial grave we left it in.
It was so hard to find it.
We kept looking everywhere in the grass.
First sweatily, soon frantically.
Calm turned into chaos and three throbbing heads, fast than a chess blitz.
After 5 minutes of stomping on very inch of grass and hoping it just got blown away by the wind — we accepted our fate.
Our big, blue dustbin was gone.
Fate comes first, regret comes second.
We sloppily walked back home, pointing fingers at each other on the sheer idea of leaving our dustbin in the wild even for 10 minutes.
The dustbin we barely looked at, and just went to throw trash in, became our 24/7 muse and discussion.
Night or morning, we talked about it like the pop celebrity who broke up with her four exes in the same fiscal year.
We talked about where we bought the dustbin, and for how much.
Things we never knew we’d discuss.
Some luck, some effort, no ransom.
Within a day, we had given up on getting it back.
Given up on good eating, sleeping, working.
If you leave your dog in the wild and it has no collar with your address, how do you expect to get it back?
You don’t, but you still hope.
If we’re good people, we blame ourselves.
If we’re good but critical thinkers, we find out who did it and blame them with conviction.
Not much later did the imagery of the two kids and their mothers flash before our eyes.
We finally knew who to go after.
Serendipity
The next afternoon, after walking for a while in the scorching sun, we came across the dumpster.
It’d be a big lie to say we did not lament.
We weren’t sure if our assumption was right, but we walked by the house opposite to the dumpster to see if we could find out dustbin.
I know, this sounds futile.
But guess what?
We saw our blue dustbin shining in the distance from outside their house.
There were two kids lying on a cot, half asleep.
Yes, those kids who saw us burying the dustbin that dark, fateful night. Beside them were three women talking amongst themselves.
They did steal it.
We got super happy about our analysis, and high-fived each other. Our hearts wanted to trespass.
Confrontation is a great thing
The question lay, “Do we confront them and get our dustbin back, or go wherever we were going and settle this later?”
We had missed my dear dustbin for way too long.
This time, we’ll not let this golden opportunity slip away.
We barged in, walked straight to the back where it was kept.
There was a red-eyed rabbit there too. Wonder if it was stolen too. We picked it up and stood again in front of the three women. This was the moment we did the confrontation.
We sternly asked,
“We left our dustbin there for 10 minutes, this is not a good thing. Why did you take our dustbin?”
They retaliated, smiled faintly and said,
“How’d we know? We thought it was trash since you abandoned it and thus took it home.”
Dumpster-diving had gone next level, and so did their reply.
We stood our ground and said,
“There’s no way you didn’t know we were coming back to pick it up. You and your kids saw us that day.”
This time, we didn’t get any reply. They must’ve thought that it was their mistake to leave the dustbin out there in daylight for everyone to catch them.
Perhaps they never thought they could get confronted for it. But they did. We knew for sure that they wouldn’t steal like this again. And moreover, it was time to rejoice.
We have finally got reunited with our stuck, old, blue friend.
And this time, we didn’t leave him out alone.
Even though we had somewhere to go, we first took him home.