The tiffen bag goof up!

Tirupur is a small town located about 50 kms from Coimbatore. It is the knitwear capital of India and one of the major textile hub in Asia. Major International brands including Tommy Hilfiger,FILA, Switcher and Reebok import textile and clothing from Tirupur.

I worked at Tirupur for a some time. I used to travel by train from North Coimbatore junction. Ours was a big gang and we had a blast while travelling. We had singing sessions, debates on current topics, gossips, games, poetry reading sessions, making the tedious journey more like a joy ride! Generally we take the morning 7 am passenger and return by the same train by 6.15 pm. We had wonderful breakfast sessions in the mornings and awesome snack times in the evenings!

Our group was an interesting one; we had doctors, civil engineers, lots of workers from the textile units, hologram specialists, post office workers, telephone exchange workers, Govt employees, bank employees and private concern workers like me. It was a time when mobile phones were becoming inevitable and every single day there would be some dumb joke percolated amongst friends. Infact there would be a small competition among us as to who shared the dumbest joke today!

One December 6th, I hung my tiffen bag on one of the posts at the station and forgot to take it while boarding the train! Not finding it, I thought I left it back at home..I dint care much for it as I got a lovely breakfast buffet from my friends. Later I remembered hanging it up on the railway post. The city was on high alert that day and due to security reasons we were given a half-day holiday. I returned around 3 pm and was surprised to see many policemen in the railway station. I remembered the date and convinced myself that it was routine protection check.

I went to the railway station office to check if they had my tiffen-bag. Guess what happened there? The moment I said I missed my lunch bag, I was swarmed by so many uniformed cops and they started bombarding me with so many questions. I was not sure, why these people were so much interested in my lost bag! At one corner, I could see a huge commotion going on. I was taken to the corner table and there was my tiffen bag - the reason behind all the clamor! Although it was surrounded by wires and detectors, I could easily identify it..

 It was only then I realized that my innocent lunch bag was the prime reason behind the bomb threat stimulated high-alert and the subsequent declaration of half-day holiday for the entire city!!!

Actually, December 6th is an important day in Indian history. It was the same day in 1992 when the (in)famous karsevaks (Hindu volunteers) destroyed the 16th century Babri Masjid (mosque) to capture Ramjanmabhoomi. This incident was the reason behind 2000 deaths that year and a minimum of 10 in the following years. In a nutshell it was the anniversary of one of the important communal riots of our country!

In retrospect, this incident is hilarious, but the amount of tension, I went through till the time I opened the bag and showed them that it had nothing but a few tortillas and some vegetable curry could not be put into words. One of them took a bite to test if it was poison; finding it tasty, they started munching the whole thing and finished the entire box! Only then all of us were relieved.

Finally they sent me home with a stern warning not to be careless with my things! I was the topmost joke amidst my friends for the next few months.. :)