The Spanish Inquisition-Seville-Part 1

As promised, the 4 of us who went to Spain collaborated and wrote this first piece. Please rest assured, this is going to get more and more interesting. I reiterate, this is by far the most memorable vacation we have ever had. Rivals the one time, I almost drowned in a temple tank, during summer holidays when I was 12.
Here goes... (Hope you guys have the patience to sit through it. Stay with me, I shall take you on a roller-coaster ride)...

The Spanish Inquisition-Seville1-Part 1

Saru has the worst luck traveling, next to Bhaskar. We have figured that out now, after this trip. Imagine this. All he had to accomplish was to come from Frankfurt to Seville with his India baggage. They pulled him over in customs in Seville as soon as he landed. For 2 hours, they went over the laddus, murukku and his underwear. As Vamsee, Kala and Bhaskar watched from outside, they had his suitcase open as they took apart the contents one by one. Then Vamsee got restless, and JOINED HIM INSIDE IN THE CUSTOMS AREA!!! One cannot even imagine this happening anywhere else. The best part was the kola-maavu (muggu pindi) he had in the suitcase. They smelt it, and then tasted it. When that didn't satisfy them, they sent it for chemical analysis. Evidently, they thought it was cocaine or heroin!! After they confirmed it was harmless calcium carbonate, they let him keep it.

After the hugs and handshakes, we had to get to the apartment. There were 6 suitcases, 4 backpacks and Saru's laptop, for the 4 of us. It looked like we had emptied our apartments/houses to come to Spain. We could have gone by bus. That would have been cheaper, but then we would have to get a cab from the last stop to our apartment. So it would work out cheaper to go by cab from the airport itself.

Just like in India, we haggled with the cab driver. After a brief back and forth in Spanish (Actually the cab driver was talking feverishly in Spanish, while we tried to catch a few words here and there in our phrase book), Kala and Bhaskar got into the cab, along with all the baggage, and Saru's laptop, which Bhaskar had slung onto his shoulder.

Now, Bhaskar & Kala's accounts of the unfolding events:

The driver drove all over the city, through some pretty shady areas for over half hour. We could not find any of the roads on the map we had. He stopped once right along the highway, thinking the radiator was overheating, all the time talking on the cell phone. Things looked quite out of the ordinary. He then pulled up in front of this old building, and was hurrying us along to get out of the car. We figured he wanted to get his car fixed as soon as possible. Isn't it interesting that when one hurries, everyone around them does too? To make matters worse, he was speaking Spanish, and we were speaking English. Imagine this, he was speaking Spanish, and at the same time dumping all our baggage on the sidewalk. While Kala was counting out the money, he grabbed it, got into his cab and drove off. We were left wondering if that was that scary a neighborhood. Didn't seem it like it though. Kids were playing soccer on the sidewalks. I did notice however, that one of the kids had a ponytail, that was yellow. The rest of his head was black. As the cab was driving off is when it hit us that the laptop got left behind in the cab! For a minute, we looked at each other when reality hit us like a ton of bricks. We lost Saru's laptop in one stupid split second!!! That cab driver was hurrying us for a reason. He wanted to disorient us, then trick us. It was pointless on our part to read a map, when half the streets did not exist on the map we had. We realized later that the map did not even cover the suburbs!!

That's when we freaked out. Kala, with her squeaky voice was on the verge of a total breakdown. Pepe, the 75-year old toothless landlord of the apartment, had already come down to meet us. He did not speak a word of English. While Bhaskar tried to explain to him that the laptop's gone, Pepe tried different people on the phone. Its evident he did not know who to call. Kala then tried to get him to call the police, but she could barely speak, since she had a nasty cold. Exasperated, Pepe then called this nice lady called Elizabeth who spoke excellent English. We initially thought she was a cop. Turns out she was the owner of the apartment and was hosting a party at her place when we had called. I gave the phone to Kala, who literally broke into tears on the phone. Seeing how distressed Kala was on the phone, Elizabeth came over to help us. She called a few taxi companies to see if they had the laptop. But there were just too many companies to call. We were by now dreading having to inform Saru and Vamsee about this. The laptop was actually issued by Saru's office, and it could jeopardize his job. It seemed as though this was all a bad dream, and that we would wake up very soon.

Meanwhile Saru and Vamsee had taken the bus, and then walked the last 1 km to get to the apartment. Hand in hand, like new lovers, they finally arrived an hour and half after they had left the airport. Bhaskar went down to the street to meet them. Saru, seeing how distressed Bhaskar seemed, commented that he looked as though he had lost something. That's when Bhaskar broke the news to them. Surprisingly, they were both calm while he explained the theft. All Saru said was "Oh man! I had my H1 documents in that bag". He had kept all the documentation he needed to get back into US in the laptop bag, and we had lost it. The four of us went to meet Elizabeth, who explained to us that our best bet was that the cab driver was honest enough to return the laptop. And that we might find him in the airport.

Elizabeth then wrote down in Spanish the following: "The bearer of this letter lost his laptop computer in a taxi on the way from the airport to the following address…..Please help him find the lost item". She also gave us her mobile number, bless her soul. We took the letter and immediately caught a taxi back to the airport. Our objective was to either find the driver and/or find a sympathetic policeman who would hear our case and file a case. The time was 8:30pm, one hour after the incident.

It was the 29^th of December. New year's was round the corner, and so was the weekend. Spain seemed like a place where people take things easy. We had to do this ourselves. 4 foreigners, who did not speak a scrap of Spanish (Actually Bhaskar knew how to say "Kiss my ass" in Spanish), in a foreign land. A very depressing and daunting task indeed.

Bhaskar was already freaked out since it was his responsibility to keep the laptop, Kala could barely talk, Vamsee has already made up her mind that we wont get any of the stuff back, and Saru held out some hope.

What happened next stumped us. We are still struggling to explain the strange sequence of events thereafter.

Coming soon!