'...Lag raha tha aaj mummy ghar pe entry nai degi'
Mumbai: Are you a serial lunchbox loser? Have you ever left behind your mother's 'premium' plastic food containers at school? And when you found out what you had done, were you afraid of going home and telling her you had lost yet another of her beloved belongings?
That’s what happened to Western Railway commuter Prakrati Kamath - who claims she has never been a person to misplace her belongings – when she took the 9.11 train from Vile Parle to Lower Parel on Thursday: She left behind eight Tupperware containers in a jute bag on the luggage rack of the first class ladies coach of the train.
By the time she realised how absent-minded she had been, the train had left the station. She was aghast, not because she had lost her lunch but because the prospect of telling her mother about it was scary.
In a frantic attempt to recover her bag, she boarded another train for Churchgate. There, she informed the Railway Police Force about her loss.
They told her they had not found anything until then but would notify her if they found her bag.
She informed her father about what had happened and then embarked on a frantic search for similar 'dabbas' on the site of a leading online retailer. All the while, however, she kept hoping she would recover her lost lunch bag.
Around 12.20pm, she tagged WR in a tweet: "Forgot my bag in the train, boarded a local from Vile Parle at 09.11 to Churchgate. Is there any possibility of getting my bag back or should I lose hope?"
She went back to Lower Parel where she met the station master and narrated her story. He gave her two options: She could either get off at every station and check or call each of them.
She requested him to call each station and he obliged, calling every station, except Churchgate. But without any luck. It was around 9.30pm when she went to Churchgate to try her luck, going to the station master's office, where to her joy, she spotted her bag behind a pile of other lost items.
As it turned out, it was a fellow Mumbaikar, an advocate, who had saved the day for her and the Western Railway took it forward, saving her from her mother's wrath.
Her lost bag with the eight containers was spotted on the rack by the advocate. She took it down and checked the contents of the boxes. On finding that it was food, she had promptly distributed it to the poor around the railway premises.
She then contacted the Railway Police Force, on her way back home, and handed over the bag to them, around 6.30pm that evening. Prakrati was duly informed and she came to the WR headquarters in the evening, for a satisfying 'takeaway'.
In gratitude, she 'trilled' a note of thanks to WR, sharing a picture of herself reunited with her lunchbag: “FOUND IT GUYSSSSSS @WesternRly THANKYOUSOMUCH. Both the bag and the 8 Tupperware dabbas in it are safe. Lag raha tha aaj mummy gharpe entry nai degi”.
