We must really be famous. News about our fame and riches have even percolated to the underworld as well. What else can you infer from the recent burglary attempt at Zyxware One. Oh, by the way, our office locations are now known as Zyxware One and Zyxware Two. Numbering not scalable? - Yeah I know. It would be funny talking about Zyxware Sixteen Thousand Three Hundred and Eighty Four :-). Back to the little robbery story.

Last week, I don't remember the day/date, a poor, miserable, idiot tried to break into Zyxware One. Poor - obviously because he was trying to steal and make a living, miserable - he was covered with oil/grease of which he left a good part on our walls, idiot - because he didn't know about the depreciation rates for computers and peripherals. By the time he would have taken to reach the road, prices of the stuff he stole would have plummeted in Taiwan and used goods depreciation would have reached 100% by the time he would have taken to reach the underworld market. The standards of our criminals are eroding massively these days. Must be that most of the really good ones have moved to politics :-)

The police is certain that there must have been more than one person because of the way the windows were broken open and the audacity in committing the act right next to SH1 and near bright street lights. The attempt must have been definitely done by people who had no idea about Zyxware or the building. They had forced open a window to a room which was used to dump the old furniture and belongings of the house owner.

Luckily the window was blocked by two cabinets heavily loaded, with old stuff and clothes, and all they could take out from the room was a bag of bones and a skull. It must have scared the wits out of them. Think of it, you are a robber trying to pull out things from a room in semi-darkness, you get hold of something heavy, eagerly you pull it out and - POOOF a skull in your hand, what do you do - yell your lungs off :-).

They were more professional than that. They just put the skull and the bones neatly back and went on methodically opening another window on the side of the building, the first one being in front of the building. The strategy they used was simple. Pry open the window using a heavy duty screwdriver and then bend the iron bars using a big wooden rod. The efficiency of this method is pretty good. The latches on the window got pulled out from the frames as if they were fixed on corkwood. The iron bars were bent almost 180 degrees as it had popped out from the groove from one of the sides.

Thankfully they managed to dislodge one of the stones they had piled up to get enough height to reach the window and this noise woke up a person sleeping in the apartment below. The moment he turned on the lights they (very likely) fled. I was called to the crime scene in the morning and we filed a police case and the rest is history.

Even though the robbers didn't manage to steal anything they have managed to disrupt my routines. Earlier I was working late nights at Zyxware Two and now I have moved my nightly haunt to Zyxware One to deter any further attempts. I have also ramped up security arrangements by reinforcing the window grills by welding an extra vertical bar connecting the horizontal ones. There went a few thousand rupees out the window literally.

I am trying to hire a few hardware service technicians from probably outside Trivandrum who can stay at Zyxware One and at the same time offer a sense of security for the place.

You might be wondering what the 450 parathas meant. For one thing it was meant to keep you reading till here and for another it is yet another story and you will have to wait for that :-)