The Mystery of the Missing Key

Here is a cute little story about how I began the New Year:

The volunteers were getting ready to go from Achen's house, back to our respective homes. I had been back and forth to mine a few times throughout the week because it is so close to Achen's, and, as I began to pack up my things and prepare to go home for good, I realized that, on one of those journeys to and from Chacko Homes, I had somehow misplaced my key. I know you're not surprised; I am the same girl who locked my keys in my car two days in a row last summer. But if it wasn't in my purse and it wasn't in my suitcase and it wasn't lying on a table somewhere, where could that key be?

"Evide thakkal, evide thakkal? (Where is the key?)" I shouted as I ran through the house, trying to make light of my stupidity. Jenika and I searched and searched and searched, and, when we had lost all hope of finding the key in Achen's house, we decided to retrace our steps - metaphorically, I mean.

"When was I last at Chacko Homes?" I wondered out loud. It had been a few days earlier to get a sari that I wanted to buy a blouse for. Jenika had been with me, and, at that time, so had the darn key. But what did I do with it later? I pondered for a while whether it was possible that I'd left the key in the room and not locked it when we left or if I'd simply left the key in the door after locking it. I certainly wouldn't put it past me. But I knew that if I'd done something as dense as that, Jenika would have alerted me. So, no, that wasn't it.

For a while, I was stuck. I'd gone from Achen's to Chacko Homes, unlocked my room and gone inside for a few minutes, then left. Where could the key have gone in that time? "Did you go anywhere else?" someone yelled from the other room.

"Did we?" I asked Jenika. We both looked confused for a minute, and then the lightbulb came on. Following our trip to Chacko Homes, Jenika and I had walked down the street to a tailor shop, where she left her new sari to be hemmed and where I had begun to suspect I had left the keys on the counter.

The light got brighter. "Oh!" Jenika nearly shouted. "Char, they are at the tailor's. When I went to pick up my sari, the woman asked me about some keys that got left there. They weren't mine, and it never occurred to me that they might be yours. I bet they're still there." This was good news. But there was bad news too: it was Sunday, and my keys were locked inside the closed tailor shop. Uggg!

It ended up being worked out. The director of Chacko Homes found me a spare while his wife fed me Christmas cake and candybars; gosh, do I love her! And this morning, I went to the tailor to ask for my key, which the kind woman gave me with a smile.

Happy New Year, indeed!