Apartments - and their balcony’s!!

Apartments are what we call our sweet home to be now a days' for a common man in metro's or say metro like cities.

I too leave in such kind of block / flat in Pune, and off course need to mention that there is a balcony for everyone in our apartment. ( Some budjet apparetments do not have balcony's ). Well, need less to say, since i am stressing for on balcony, the incident i am going to narrate is of such kind.

It was around late night hours of a chilly January month at Pune. My apartment is located at an isolated location, surrounded by farm’s on all four sides and thus making it extremely chilly in winter. January month's temperature drops to 6-7 degrees at times and with cold breeze its extremely impossible to stand in balcony even for sake of smoking out.

I used to work in second shift and my usual turn out time to reach home would be mid night 2 o clock. It was a normal working day for me on Tuesday when i came by home at exact time as mentioned. i parked my vehicle and was cruising through the lift to reach home and have a tight nap. I quickly arranged my self to bed clothing and adjusted myself to sleep next to my deep sleeping wife. In almost a moment i heard a sounds of people mesmerizing. Few minutes later their discussion took momentum, talks increased. I ignored. i thought, must be some stupid people have come out for smoke in balcony and they don have to go to bed now. This continued for few more minutes and it now started disturbing me, not allowing me to concentrate on my sleep. Finally i decided to located the voices. There were 3 idiots, talking abt something in balcony of A wing in opposite building. I said what the heck, must be some bachelors creating nuisance and disturbing uncle's like me :), I raised my voice and had a shout at them, "Kya chal raha hai be, Sona nahi hai kya ?" immediately one of them replied, bhaiya, " hum phaus gaye hai ! " We guys have stuck up in this balcony since past couple of hours, We want help !

I asked them about reasons, they told, there roommate is fast asleep with his ipod on, we came in balcony and accidentally unlocked the balcony door, and now we are unable to open it up. I asked them about there mobiles, they said there mobiles are inside flat. I asked one of them to give his no, so that i would try from my cell to ring up, At least his mobile ring would help there room mate to wake up. I dialed, but his cell was not reachable ! I asked them to wait, And i called up our security extention from my house, i told security guard to go and bell on Flat A2 - 903, And the security uncle was lazy enough to just ring 1 bell. I again called up and asked him to bell up continuously until some one wake's up and opens the door. Security bhaiya tried his level best this time but alas ! no response ! I decided to help the bachelor's out, until they would sleep, i wont be able to sleep. I goggled, and got a key maker's no and found one, who works 24 /7 and immediately rang him, it was 2.30 AM by that time. Finally got connected, "Bhaiya, kuch log flat ke balcony mein phas gaye hai, kya aap idhar aakar darwaja khol sakte ho, latch lock hai !" Bhaiya replied, nahi bhai, i am out of town, :( I asked him for some tricks and tips. He said that i will open with the help of screw driver, i said damn, lets give it a try. Till that time it was freezing cold. The guys stuck there began to freeze, the uttered in desperation, "Please help us with kambal at least, we will sleep here whole night". i thought this people would die like this.

Till this point of time, my wife, mom, both were well awake and mom helped up with some kambals for them. Luckily they were stuck up at 9th floor on 11 stories of building. And since we have alternate balconies arrangement, i could throw the blankets to them form the terrace. So i geared up, got up with one screwdriver, 3 blankets, a thread bundle, And headed towards security guard and asked for key's of terrace for A2 building's that particular wing. Security boy accompanied with me and we headed towards terrace. Well just to mention here that our building terraces are always locked. And so I quickly questioned the guard if he had carried the keys with him. He looked in despair and showed the key box with more than 50 keys in that box. What the hell?? He was not sure which would be the exact key for the terrace of A2 building. At that moment the security guard felt to me like Lord Hanuman. When the Lord was asked to bring sangevani buti, he had carried the whole mountain instead.

Now the pain was to get the exact match for the lock, we checked the lock number, thinking that we could find the key bearing the lock. Checking out one by one, finally we got the exact match. It was 3.00 AM by that time. Finally the door opened up and we quickly ran towards the parfait wall from where we could see the guys locked up. Looking at us, they were very delighted with the hope we showed to them. I immediately tied the screw driver with a rope and slowly started pushing the screwdriver down towards them. They got a hold of it and then started their attempt to break the locked glass door, after 3-4 tries, Bingo !! They got breakthrough.

What a sleigh of relief to all of us. They went through the balcony to the main door to return my screw driver. And finally the deep sleeping friend of theirs woke up.

Just to make a note that this kind of balcony door locking has become a common problem for many of us. Same thing had happened in my flat also, when we had just come to visit the new flat before getting possession. I was locked up in balcony along with my younger brother, Dad and Mom. We had to do many phone calls before a painter rescued us from the terrace. ( mine is a top floor flat), Impact of the incident was so high that we subsequently planned for a vastu puja the very next day, which none of us even thought of doing so early.