honey wallah cum mobile phone thief.

Yesterday, Julie and I had one of our favorite visitors – the local honey wallah.  The young man in the video comes every three or so months to our neighborhood to extract honey from one of the dozens of hives drooping from building overhangs.  Our quest for pure, unadulterated, local-as-possible honey landed us in our own block.  It is amazing.  And dirt cheap.

This cache is part of 110 pounds of honey from one comb.  Since a pound of honey demands visits to two million flowers, that’s quite an accomplishment.  We bought 31 pounds for $40.

Our neighbor has been buying from this man for a decade.  Our knowledge of that and our crazy week put our guard down.  We invited him to weigh the honey inside instead of on the roof like our neighbor does.  Then, we helped him and his young, unknown cousin carry the honey containers into the kitchen.  In that small window of time our two mobile phones (including a gifted iphone) went missing.  We didn’t notice until an hour after they were gone.

A couple of factors worked against the lift.  I just happened to video the entire transaction which shows both their faces and our two phones sitting on their stand.  The neighbor below us is a former police inspector and asked for printed pictures to take to his friends at the station.  Furthermore, our neighbor Sadiq who buys from this man has his contact info.

Sadiq called our phones and both were switched off.  Then he called the honey wallah.  He said he was eating dinner in Majestic.  Majestic happens to be the very place stolen phones are bought and sold.  Sadiq told him that our phones were missing, we have him on video, and we were going to the police.  He also wisely suggested that the honey dealer had nothing at all to do with it and that is was probably his rascal cousin.  This gave the man a chance to save face and blame his cousin.  He called back ten minutes later, phones magically found on his cousin.

The man returned an hour later with his wife and baby son.  And no cousin.  He was appealing to our mercy.  Of course we readily forgave him.  We were amazed to have the phones back in our possession.  Any more delay and I’m sure they would have been sold and gone forever.

The kicker of the story – the man asked for $2 to cover his auto fare to bring the phones back!  I was so humored, I gave it to him.