Dr Swaraj faces a series of questions and criticisms following a burglary, leading to reflections on fear, security, and the loss of innocence in a world filled with ubiquitous fears – an exclusive for Different Truths.

Making themselves comfortable on the sofa, they turned towards me. They had already seen the layout of our house. Their boss, a sub-inspector said, “Who else lives with you?”

“My wife.”

“I mean apart from your wife.”

“I’ve only one,” I said, with a smile. The smirk on his face indicated that banter was utterly inopportune. Post burglary, there is simply fear and no room for jokes. Laughter is not a panacea, especially on the morning of burglary.

“Your mother-in-law came yesterday to stay with you, is that right?”

 “Yes, in the afternoon.”

“As you say, the thieves entered from the backside of the bedroom in which your mother-in-law was sleeping?”

“Not from the backside, but from the rear bedroom door that opens into the backyard.” The English teacher in me was obviously ruffled. He seemed puzzled but went on with his queries.

“After emptying her purse, they entered the living room and then your bedroom. Is that right?”

“Unfortunately, it is.”

“As you say, you didn’t wake up? None of you. Is that right?”

“Yes. If someone had woken up, things would’ve been different. Either we might have caught the thief, an unlikely possibility at our age. Or, we might not have been there to report the theft.” I wanted to add that I would have been saved this grilling also. But thankfully I kept silent. I knew only the police could recover what the thieves had taken away.

“Hmm … good for you and the thieves too,” the head constable observed.

His sarcasm was not lost on me. But I maintained a poker face even in the face of the egg thrown on my face. 

“Isn’t it odd that you slept like a log when they were emptying your wallets and purses, and rummaging through your wardrobes? How could you sleep like that?”

Now this was too much. “Sir, if we can’t sleep soundly in our own home, then where else on earth can we sleep well? Is sleeping like a log in our own haven a crime?”

He didn’t answer. I felt tempted to give him a lecture on the benefits of deep sleep. On how sleep can overpower a person even in the worst circumstances. I thought of reciting a couplet from Khamosh Ghazipuri’s ghazal: “Neend to dard ke bistar pe bhi aa sakti hai / Unki aagosh mein sar ho ye zaruri to nahin” (Sleep can overpower a person even on a bed of thorns / It is not necessary for the head to be resting in the beloved’s lap). But I kept mum. I had seen in crime serials how police can sniff rats in everything. This couplet could have given an unwanted twist to the investigation. Who knows what sort of rat they would have smelt in this innocent remark!

I could pepper my talk even with a few lines from Keats’s “Sonnet to Sleep”. In particular, the line where he calls sleep a “soft embalmer of the still midnight.” But I did not. Discretion is the better part of valour. Or let’s say of volubility, which is a typically professorial trait.

“So, as you say, you had forgotten to bolt the doors of the bedroom from inside in which your mother-in-law was sleeping? You should have been more careful. This wasn’t the first theft in your house. It is the second, as you say.”

“Yes, as I say, it is the second, the first one was in March 2016. Yes, as I say, we forgot to bolt the doors. But is that a crime? Is forgetfulness a crime? Don’t we forget so many things in our daily life? Don’t you? Are sound sleep and forgetfulness cognizable offences? Those two masked thieves who broke into my house were criminals, I am not. Is that right, as I say?”

He must have been taken aback by this outburst.

“Don’t be angry Professor. I never meant that. I’m just curious to know everything,” he said apologetically.

“I want you to direct all your curiosity and energies to finding the thieves.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do? We will try our best. But you have to cooperate with us.”

“Haven’t I been cooperating till now?”

Before leaving, they advised us to bolt all the doors properly at night. They promised to send a forensic team for fingerprints or any other clues. We heaved a sigh of relief. But the relief was very short-lived.

As the news spread in the neighbourhood, anxious neighbours started trooping in. All had the same questions on their lips: How could it be that we didn’t wake up? How could we leave the door unbolted? A God-fearing neighbour said, “It was God who saved you from physical harm. It was his will that you didn’t wake up.” I wanted to ask, “Well, then why didn’t God protect us from theft? Maybe, it was his will to help the thieves also. Who knows?” He is a very religious person. Hence, I did not want to hurt his religious sentiments with my scepticism. As it is, religious sentiments have become highly vulnerable to getting hurt nowadays. So, mum was the word.

And then arrived the forensic experts. They were four. After getting all the necessary information from us, they had a round of the house. They informed us that all the door handles were old and had gone rough with age. Fingerprints can be found only on shiny door handles. My fault, again. Thieves can come at any time. Hence, the door handles must be polished regularly for them to leave their fingerprints. I had failed to rub them clean.   

While examining the emptied purses, one of them said, “You shouldn’t have touched anything. By handling these purses, you have smudged all the fingerprints.” Again, my fault. I said, “Well, in that case, how could we know what we had lost?” “Well, you could have waited for us.” Our fault: indeed, we didn’t wait for them.     

By the end of the day, I was not only feeling guilty, but stupid too. Guilty of facilitating the theft by not bolting the door. Stupid for not waking up to get killed. So much so, that my own kin accused me of being careless. I had refused to learn a lesson from the first burglary.

The next morning, a neighbourhood grocer greeted me with a mysterious smile. In the past, he was always complaining about supermarkets destroying his business. To me, he was like Morris Bober in Bernard Malamud’s novel “The Assistant”. Bober, a Jewish shopkeeper had fallen into poverty. Enamoured by modern shops, his customers had stopped patronising his shop. Bober was always serious. Always “schmerz” – a German word that translates roughly into “world pain’ or “world-weary”.  Our grocer was like Bober. His slow movements gave the impression of his world-weariness. His smile was certainly a novelty. Soon I understood the secret behind his smile. He said, “The police came to your house?” “Yes.” “What strange friends you have who keep visiting you night after night!” “What do you mean?” His smile deepened, contorting his ageing, wrinkled face: “This is the fourth time they came to you? How rich you must be, Professor!” “Not fourth but second. In any case, if you wish, I will give your address to my friends the next time they come. Since they come when I am asleep, I will put a poster with your photo and address in my bedroom with a request to them to oblige you. Will that make you happy?” His smile vanished. I left his shop without buying anything.   

This is not the only incident when I became the butt of laughter. There were many others too who made similar comments. I just listened and kept quiet. I could argue with one grocer, but not with everyone.

The icing on the cake was the newspaper report two days later. The headline read: “Thieves make away with … as owners sleep.” I found the headline to be unfair and in bad taste. It implied that they stole my money because I had slept like a log. I wanted to call the reporter to give him a piece of my mind. While apportioning the blame, or let’s call it credit, the reporter should have been fair. Some credit should have been given to the thieves as well for their professionalism. Look at the stealth with which they did their job! But the reporter gave all the credit to us instead! How unfair!  

The outcome of the newspaper report was devastating. Even those who hadn’t heard about the theft came to know about it. The day began with phone calls. Most of our sympathisers asked just one question: “How could you remain sleeping when your house was being burgled?” I could hear their chuckles. One sympathiser laughed so loudly that his laughter could have reached my ears even without the phone! Another one joked that the thieves were not so bad. After all, they didn’t harm us. I said, “I’ll pray to God to send such gentle thieves to your house too.” He disconnected the phone and never called again.

Not only was there a steady stream of phone calls, but of sane advice too. The singular refrain was: We have to take all security measures. Even the crime branch sleuths during their two visits emphasised the same thing. We must make ourselves secure in every possible way. “Why do we need the police if we have to fend for ourselves?” I felt like asking. But the midlife spread of that uniformed sleuth deterred me. Their jobs are a source of their livelihood. The security of people is their own concern.  

The sanest advice came from a close friend known for his reticence. Such blokes are generally men of wisdom. He said, “Keep all your money and valuables in your bedroom. Bolt all the doors and windows of the bedroom from inside at night. Don’t open the door even if you hear any noise in any other room. Your personal safety should take precedence over everything else.” I asked, “Should we then imprison ourselves in our room and leave the rest of the house at the mercy of vandals?” He just smiled and left. His advice appeared sound. However, I realised that the very idea of nocturnal incarceration is alien to my nature.

More than a month after the incident, my neighbours still look at me with strange eyes. As if I am from another planet. After losing our sleep, our ears remain primed for ominous sounds at night. We hear knocking sounds when there are none, as in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”:

Here's a knocking indeed! If a
man were porter of hell-gate, he should have
old turning the key.

And like Macbeth in the play, we hear voices crying “Sleep no more.” The difference is that in the play, Macbeth had murdered sleep by murdering Duncan in sleep. In our case, it is that one bout of deep sleep that has murdered sleep. Or the banal fear of the unknown. We have lost the sleep, the “innocent sleep” to quote from “Macbeth”:

that knits up the ravelled sleave of care

The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

Dispossession of sleep is the dispossession of wakefulness as well. Fears lurk everywhere. Fears of uncertain provenance; liquid fears as Zygmunt Bauman would say. Xenophobia, the fear of the other. Our gated colonies and our homes fortified with electronic surveillance devices are manifestations of our fears. There is no getting away from fears; the biggest fear being that of loss of sleep. If we don’t sleep, we don’t awaken, since we awaken only from sleep. Burglary is just one mishap; fears are ubiquitous in our world today.

Picture design by Anumita Roy

Prof. Swaraj Raj

Prof. Swaraj Raj is a Patiala-based freelance writer, translator, a keen photographer, and nature enthusiast. He retired as Professor of English and Dean, Faculty of Languages, Sri Guru Granth Sahib World University, Fatehgarh Sahib. He has more than 70 publications to his credit in journals and books.

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