At 9.30 AM, the doorbell rang and 82-year-old Bapu opened the door of his house. He found an apple outside it. It intrigued him, to say the least. He gave it a cold but close look. It indeed was an apple, his favourite fruit. A nice, red, ripe apple plucked fresh from a tree, Bapu reckoned.
What was an apple doing outside his door? he wondered. He left the newspaper he was reading on the chair and came back again to the door to examine the apple. He peeped out to check who had kept it there. He looked left and right. He saw no one.
When he had opened his door at 7.30 AM for the milkman and later at around 8 AM for the newspaper, the apple wasn’t there. But now it was there. He picked it up after double checking that no one was watching. He shrugged his shoulders. “Food should not be wasted like this,” he thought. “It is a gift from God. I will take it as His prasad,” he told himself, and picked up the apple. He kept it in the fridge and had it after his tea that evening.
Bapu lived alone after he lost his wife to a prolonged illness last year. His days were filled with broad sweeps of silence and inactivity. Small bouts of food and sleep punctuated them. He didn’t go anywhere; he didn’t feel like it. All that he needed, he or his daughter ordered and got delivered home. His only daughter, also in her fifties, lived in another city with her family. She called him every day, more or less.
“Do you call me every day just to check if the old man is still alive?” He asked her that evening. “I am there, for today at least. Don’t worry, we will see tomorrow,” Bapu said, disappointing his daughter.
She often wondered what her aged, hassled father, grieving for long, expected from her. If she called him every day, she had to listen to this biting sarcasm. And if she didn’t call him for a few days, she still had to listen to caustic comments of another kind. “Have you left your old dad to die? You are calling after three days,” he would then say. Heads I win, tails you lose. Even she wasn’t getting any younger.
The topic of today’s call was the apple that had manifested out of thin air. “I found a mysterious apple outside my door today,” he told her.
“Oh, you must have ordered it,” she remarked. She knew well that he often ordered fruits and vegetables on phone for delivery. And then he forgot to pick them up after the vendor delivered. Hard of hearing in one ear, he often missed the doorbell. The vendor knew that, and often kept the delivery outside the door if he got no response.
“No, this I hadn’t ordered,” he insisted.
“Hmm,” Bapu’s daughter said.
“What hmm? How can an apple appear out of nowhere?” he persisted with his doubts.
“So what did you do? Bapu, it’s only an apple. I hope you didn’t lodge a complaint with anyone,” she queried, teasing him.
“Well, one part of my mind thought I should. Security should be more vigilant. How can someone come inside the apartment without any checks, and place an apple at an old man’s door? Is the watchman sleeping?” Bapu raised his voice.
“It’s just an apple, Bapu,” his daughter tried to reason with him.
“What if it was a bomb? You wouldn’t be talking to me today,” he raised his concern.
“But it wasn’t. So did you do anything?” the daughter probed.
“No. I restrained myself. I didn’t,” Bapu informed her.
“Ok good, so what did you do with it?” she asked.
“Nothing. I picked it up and ate it,” Bapu informed her.
“Good, that’s what most people do with apples generally,” she laughed out loud.
“Why waste food? It’s a gift from God,” Bapu said, not quite appreciating her joke.
“Indeed Bapu,” his daughter agreed.
The next morning, at around 9.30 again, the doorbell rang. Bapu opened the door and there was no one. He saw an apple on the floor again. This time, the apple intrigued Bapu again. And he did the same thing as yesterday. “How can I waste food?” he thought and picked it up.
The next morning, he decided that he is going to catch the culprit. He finished his breakfast, had his bath, and got ready early. For some reason, he wore good clothes though the expected visitor was not a person, but a fruit. He opened the door at 9.20 AM and waited. He pretended as if he was reading the newspaper, but his attention was on the door. It was 9.30, and he expected the apple man to come anytime now.
But no one turned up today. He waited till around 9.45 with his attention intact. By 10 o’clock, he lost patience. He closed the door and changed to his regular home clothes. As he was about to settle into his morning nap at 11, the doorbell rang. He thought it was his daily lunch box delivery boy who had arrived early today. But when he opened the door, he saw nobody.
When he was about to close the door, he noticed the apple on the floor. There it was. The nice, red, juicy apple waiting for him to pick it up. He picked it up but this time he decided to do something about it. I can’t take this mysterious apple episode lying down, he thought. He changed back to his good set of clothes. He climbed down the stairs and walked a few meters to the security cabin where the watchman sat.
“Watchman, come here,” he called him.
“Good morning Sir,” the watchman came running when he saw Bapu.
“Did you see someone with an apple coming into the building?” Bapu asked.
“With an Apple phone Sir? You lost it Sir?” the curious watchman asked.
“No. Not an Apple phone. An apple. The fruit,” Bapu clarified.
The watchman had a look of intrigue on his face. He scratched his head and looked at the security cabin. He asked his colleague.
“Fruit wala aaya tha?” the watchman asked, to which the other guard shook his head.
“You guys are sleeping on duty,” Bapu warned them.
“No Sir,” the watchman revolted.
“Then how did I find this apple outside my door?” Bapu raised his hand to unveil the apple. The watchman took a look at the apple and scrutinized it. It seemed like a regular apple to him.
“Don’t know Sir,” he said, and returned the apple back to Bapu.
“That’s exactly the point. How can security not know? Can someone come inside without any checks, and place an apple outside my door?” Bapu asked. The security men hung their heads in shame for having missed the apple.
Bapu had a ready demand.
“Tomorrow morning, you come to my house at 9 AM sharp,” he pointed at the watchman. “I will tell you what to do. We will solve this mystery of the morning apple,” Bapu said. The watchman nodded his head. Bapu went away with a smile.
He decided to have a walk around the building before going back to his flat. He thought it will get him physically and mentally alert. That should help for the important assignment tomorrow. In the evening, he told his daughter of his plan for the next day.
“We will find out the apple culprit tomorrow,” he boasted with a smile.
“Wonderful, tell me what happens,” she encouraged Bapu.
***
The next morning the doorbell rang at 9 AM sharp. It was the security watchman. Bapu opened the door with a broad smile. But the security guard didn’t have a smile on his face. He had an apple in his hand.
“Sir, this was at your door,” he explained.
So the apple had turned up before 9 AM today. “What an inconsistent, undisciplined apple!” Bapu thought. “It seems to follow different times every day. Why can’t it come at the same time, so I get this figured out quickly,” he wondered. Bapu asked the security guard to go back to his duty and spent some time on what to do next.
“Why don’t you check if someone else in the society is facing a similar problem, Bapu?” his daughter asked him that evening.
“Are you the only one getting this apple every day? Check with, let’s say, Joshi Uncle. He used to be a good pal of yours, isn’t it?” she insisted.
Bapu thought she had a point. This appearance of an unexpected apple might be a more widespread problem. Who knows? Others might be facing a similar problem. Why apple? Others may be getting different fruits of their choice. “Who knows?” he thought. “This was something worth checking,” he agreed in his mind.
But he didn’t exactly like the idea of talking to Joshi. It had been a while since they had spoken. The last he remembered was a couple of years back at the society function. That was before his wife had fallen sick, he recollected. After that, he hadn’t met Joshi. Why Joshi alone? He hadn’t met anybody.
But then this was important. He might have some clues. Joshi was a good man, though Bapu would have liked if he spoke a bit lesser with age. Even so, Bapu took his daughter’s suggestion and called Joshi.
“Apple?” Joshi asked when Bapu explained the situation.
“Yes, an unidentified apple turns up every day at my door. Do you get anything like that?” Bapu reiterated.
“I don’t have any such problems,” Joshi broke into a loud laugh. Then he added, “That apple man might know I am not a health freak like you Bapu. I should check if someone places an unidentified beer at my door instead.” Joshi broke into a loud guffaw at his own joke, along with a frivolous take at Bapu’s apple.
“This is serious, Joshi, it’s a security issue for the society. What if it turns out to be a bomb tomorrow?” Bapu tried to get Joshi back to the topic of discussion.
“Hmm. You have a point Bapu,” Joshi agreed. “Ok let me do one thing. I will come tomorrow to your house. Then we will find a way,” Joshi said, and Bapu agreed.
The next day Joshi came home in the evening. Apart from the case of the unexpected apple, they discussed all and sundry. They covered politics, the state of the nation, the reducing standards of culture, et al. Eventually, they decided that this daily hassle of the apple needed a better solution. Installing a small camera outside the door would be a good idea. Bapu got to work on that and informed his daughter.
“But why such a fuss over this?” she asked him. “Let’s fix it when I am there, after two months,” she insisted.
“For two months then, I will have to live with the mystery of this apple?” Bapu disagreed but relented.
“Ok then wait for a month. Till then, go to the market and find out the best camera model, so we don’t waste time,” she instructed him. Bapu agreed. For the next few days he went with Joshi to look for the camera. Every day they went to a new shop. Word caught on that Bapu and Joshi were shopping for a door camera. A few other septuagenarian citizens in the vicinity living alone like Bapu got interested.
“We are five of us buying this door camera. So the vendor is giving a discount on this model,” Bapu told his daughter after a few days.
The daughter smiled in delight. “Wonderful,” she said. “I am coming there in fifteen days,” she informed him.
For the next fifteen days, the apple kept appearing at the door at different times. Sometimes at 9 AM, other times at 12 noon. On some days, when Bapu came back from his shopping in the evening, he found the apple at his door. At other times when he had nowhere to go, it would come early. When he decided to be on guard to catch the apple man, he found it waiting to be picked up early at 7 AM. The story of the manifesting apple spread across the area. A lot of senior citizens gave their advice on how to nab the culprit. Some of them said that it was only a matter of time. Once they install the door camera, the apple man’s days were numbered, they reassured Bapu. They were right, Bapu told himself. It was only a matter of time.
***
Bapu’s daughter arrived after fifteen days. They installed the camera. As soon as the camera was set up, the apple stopped appearing. From the next day, no apple arrived.
“Where is the apple?” his daughter asked. “We put this camera and there’s no apple now,” she remarked.
Bapu was happy. He felt his solution had worked.
“Look, I told you that when we install the camera, either we will get him, or he will stop. He is smart. He has his network. He knows there’s a camera now. So he won’t come,” Bapu told his daughter with a sense of victory. “I told you it can be a security issue,” Bapu told Joshi. Joshi celebrated. So did all the other septuagenarians. They had finally stopped the apple culprit, though they hadn’t caught him. Or her.
Late that night, after Bapu slept, his daughter’s phone rang.
“How is he?” the voice on the other side asked.
“He seems to be fine now,” she whispered stepping out into the balcony. “He met the security, Joshi uncle and has now installed the camera along with others. Things seem to have gone as per your plan.”
“Very good. So it looks like he has come out of his shell. I will stop placing the apple now,” the voice concluded. “But I would suggest you stay over for a few more days.”
“Yes, I am planning to be here for a week,” the daughter said.
“That’s good. Grief can be a slow killer. Physical and mental. Especially when it is due to the passing away of a spouse,” the voice said.
“Yes, agree. Thanks a lot for your help Doc. I was so worried for him after my mother went. This wouldn’t have been possible without you,” the daughter said.
“No worries, dear. I hope you don’t need a psychiatrist again. It’s time for me to sign off. An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” the voice laughed with Bapu’s daughter and hung up.
***