I was out in the city for some work and had parked my Ather 450 nearby. I had thought it was a safe place to park since Bengaluru had no specific demarcated public parking areas. Besides I was also confident about the security of my electric scooter and knew that I could always track it through its GPS. So, I planned to go around, finish all my work, and return in an hour to where I’d parked my 450.
But I was in for a shock when I reached back. The 450 wasn’t there where I had parked it. Alas, it was missing! What could have happened to it? I don’t usually forget things, I thought, wondering whether dementia had silently crept in. I tried tracing my path, using some memory techniques, but couldn’t think of anything. I was so sure I had parked my scooter in that very place! I asked of the people standing around if they had seen my white scooter- ‘Neevu bellagina battery-scooter nodidraa? Green number plate-du?’. But everyone shook their heads and said ‘ Illa, saar!’
Where could my scooter be? It was the vehicle of my dreams; I gone to so many places on my sparkling white scooter and had so many memories with it. How could it just vanish?
So I pulled out my mobile phone from the pocket, opened the Ather App, and looked for my scooter’s location on the map- but saw nothing. The scooter was nowhere to be found on the map as well. I went blank.
After thinking for a while, two things came to my mind. First, I realized that I should call up Ather’s customer care number and inform them about everything that had just happened, and then go to the Hulimavu Police Station to lodge a complaint against this theft.
Upon calling Customer Care, they asked me various questions and then said, “Sir, we are so sorry to hear this. Your vehicle was last seen 30 min back in this location and now we are unable to trace it. Now its GPS is not beaming any signal and is silent. Could you please report this at a police station? In the meantime, we will check with our Product Team on whether there is any way to trace it”. Then I asked them if they could send me the co-ordinates of the last location it was spotted in. I felt bad and angry at myself and felt I should have brought my ‘disc lock’ and locked it (I have a disc lock which I use it to lock when I park for long-duration/say vacation time, it is really heavy, sturdy, and not that easy to break). But now… what to do?
I went to Police Station and asked to register a lost report. Police in the front desk said, 'Sir, please lodge the compliant in E-Lost Report App which is available in Play Store, this is how we take complaints and we do not take any paper compliant anymore. Dinakke nooru complaint barutte, sir, we are unable to handle it". All my energy to reach the police station had gone down the drain. I was disappointed; I had been expecting that something magical would happen and had dreamt of getting back my lost scooter in those two minutes. But since I had no other way, I downloaded the App, filled up all the necessary information, and submitted it. The policeman said to me, “The receipt of complaint is available in the app itself. If we get any info, we will call you”.
Now, what could I do? I remembered my cousin who had her Toyota Innova stolen, which she never got back even after two years! How could I expect my Ather 450, which is just worth more than a lakh, back? So many thoughts started to run across my mind. I started to realize the value of the lost item (its zero-maintenance cost, zero pollution, excellent customer care, etc.) I began thinking about what to do next as well and cursed my bad luck; the 450 Plus is expensive, I’d have to buy Ather Plans separate, and is getting a new model smart? I couldn’t even figure out where this scooter was!
Suddenly, a WhatsApp message popped up from Ather Customer Care which had my scooter’s last GPS location. I clicked it and found out that it was somewhere near Shivajinagara, where I have never been in my whole life except for the usual Commercial Street shopping.
Instead of relying on the police, I thought I should investigate this on my own, and flagged an auto. Remembering some news clipping where someone found his lost vehicle all by himself, I prayed to several gods, hoping that this would happen to me too. But then when the auto driver said, ‘Sir, sigodu kashta ide… sikkidre nimma luck’, it was like salt on a wound.
Finally, after going through some small dingy roads I reached a shop. It was a shop where two-wheelers were disassembled, and their parts lying around. Upon asking for the owner of the shop, I was directed to a six-feet tall, hefty, well-built man. No way could I flex my muscles in front of him! I told myself that I could not be a hero here. So I went near him and politely said ‘White battery scooter…’. That’s it, he understood. He walked along with me and said, “Your scooter is elsewhere… you have no evidence that this is yours, you cannot do anything.”
He went near a small room that looked like a bathroom and opened the door. There was an Ather 450 inside, parked vertically. He said in a commanding voice, “You may take this if you want!”
In grief, I looked at this different scooter not mine. There was no smart seven-inch display on it anymore, instead there was a normal odometer that read ‘00000 km’. Everything that I loved about it was gone. Watching me, the owner said in an angry tone, “We strip off all the intelligence which you boast of, we know where to cut it…”
Then- suddenly- I heard my alarm clock ring. It was six o’clock in the morning!
I was so happy. It was all a dream and I still had my 450 safe and sound. But there was another thought too, at the back of my mind. What if my vehicle did get stolen some day? Has Ather simulated and tested this scenario?
Then I realized it was all due to the BCP (Business Continuity Process) which I was thinking on the previous day.
