I am a regular visitor to Pragati Maiden, Delhi for all major fairs like - Book Fair, Print Pack, Aahar, Trade Fair organized by ITPO (India Trade Promotion Organization). Trade fair 2008 will remain in my memories for long.I started from Gurgaon at around 12noon, on the way to Pragati Maiden i collected the tickets from one of my friends living at Sarojini Nagar. There were two more friends who were joining me, Arnab & Anshuman.I reached Pragati Maiden by around 2pm & parked my Bullet Electra 5S at Supreme Court Advocate parking. Expecting this as a Supreme court advocate parking i left my brand new Helmet unlocked with the bike. I got a call from Arnab who was waiting for me at Gate no.4, which was around 500mtrs away. We both met at Gate no4 & started moving towards entrance. It was a Sunday, so as expected there was huge crowd ahead of us. Slowly & Steadily we entered inside, later Anshuman joined us & we visited couple of stalls. After roaming for an hour or two, we settled at some eating point & ate lot of things there, as each of us were damn hungry by the time.
We purchased few handicraft items & stationary products. It was already 7pm by the time we were drinking coffee at a coffee shop & we decided to leave for home, Arnab left us both at Gate No6 & we both started to moving towards parking. On the way towards parking, i told Anshuman that we have to look for a Helmet shop as according to Delhi traffic rules, its mandatory to wear helmets for the both the riders on a two wheeler. We reached the area where i had parked my bike, surprisingly my helmet which i hanged unlocked on the Bike was missing. Entire parking area was no man land, this parking was free parking, hence there were no security personal to take care of the parked vehicles. I thanked God it was just helmet & not bike which was theft. We thought it would be nice to keep bike properly locked here for a while till the time we can get the helmets from nearby Market place.
Our journey in search of helmet shop started on the bare foots from nearby Metro station- Pragati maiden but we were unable to find any Helmet shop there. We kept walking further & reached ITO Bridge, still nowhere any sign of a single helmet shops in this market place as well. Now it was hard for us to be on foot, therefore we boarded a bus from the nearby bus stop, in order to get the tickets i checked my wallet found a single note of Rs10/- inside that wallet & same was the position of Anshu's wallet. We were lucky that 10 Rupees note was enough for the conductor & we manged to board till Daryaganj market. Bus dropped us exactly opposite to ICICI ATM to certain extent some of our miseries were over.
Walking couple of meters, Anshuman shouted happily seeing a Hero Honda Motor cycle showroom, i was not very excited seeing this showroom as I thought we are not here to buy a motorcycle, we are here to buy helmet". I stopped at words Helmet & answer came - yes this is the right place to buy a helmet. Hurray! The show room owner was just about put the shutter down when we both reached on his shop. We requested him to entertain us as customes for Helmets purchase & he took us to his reception where he showed us the cheapest helmets available with him. We didn't bargained to this & quickly purchased two helmets for 300bucks which was not a bad deal after struggling to find a helmet shop.
We got into a bus which was moving towards ITO just in front of showroom. It had just covered a Km when conductor came to us asked us for ticket, we told him to give us a ticket till ITO. Listening this he asked us get down immediately on the next bus stop as were on the wrong bus. Our day was quiet big enough & still pretty long way to go.
Again on our foots, we were now looking for an autorikshaw which can be approppriate means to get us back to our destination. At last we got an autorikshaw & without asking him the charges we quickly boarded it, for that instance if he had asked us for 100bucks we must had paid it. Auto dropped us at the same place where my bike was parked, Thanks to God my bike was still standing there. We both got our helmets on & i drove back to Gurgaon.
What is the Learning?
I am sure readers must have learning out of this story, lets hear more from the readers on their views.
luv u all!
Devu
Comments
I think ur helmet is a public property, people never hesitate to take that.
You can remember one of our sunday when we visited the famous Bangla Saheb Gurdwara at CP ur helmet lost but my helmet was hanging there.
But, see one thing, on both places we parked bikes in unauthorized area (due to heavy rush).
What was the lesson?
General peoples intentions are bad, we can never change their stealing attitude. we are also lucky enough only helmets gone not our darlings (dream bikes), if that i will be sure we were going to be mad that time.
To cope it , u know i have one good idea. u have seen, generally i have been using my old, cheap helmet. Thieves think they will not get good bucks against that, so my helmet remains safe & sturdy.
Arnab
I think my helmets are made of gold or silver. Thats why people dont hesitate to steal it away. Till date i had lost 3helmets, all from studus. My present helmet is again of Studus. I love the designs & sturdy helmets from studus, thats why i dont go for any helmets.
In loosing helmets, somewhere we are also responsible beacause we give them chance for stealing. We must be careful while locking these properly at public places.