Originally written on 19th April 2022
At around 6:30 PM today, I followed a part of my routine that I’ve been following for a few days. Little did I know how interesting this day was going to get.
I took out my bicycle and put my AirPods in. I like to listen to music while cycling, and although there’s a lot of traffic on the road, thankfully, the Apple AirPods I own have transparency mode, amplifying outside sounds and making cycling in traffic less dangerous. So, I set out to cycle and cycled for a while when I received a phone call from one of my close friends. He asked me what I was doing, and when I told him I was cycling, he told me he would call later. I decided to keep talking as I was already on my way home. Soon, I returned home, and since I was wearing AirPods, I just kept roaming about while talking to him.
Now, we have a lovely family renting out the top floor of our house, and they have a young 3-year-old daughter. One of our neighbors had recently kept a white mouse as a pet, and she found them very interesting. The neighborhood girl was roaming outside our house, carrying the white mouse in her hand, and upon having a glance through our gate, the kid immediately wanted to go and see the mouse. I obliged and held her hand, and took her to the mouse.
She was delighted to see it, and I even gave the cute guy a small pet. Since her mother was also there, I left her to play with the mouse while continuing to talk to my friend on the phone.
A few minutes later, I heard the girl cry. She had fallen after running on the road and was now crying and demanding to see her mother. I picked her up and tried to find her mother, but she was nowhere to be seen. In between crying, she told me that her Mom had gone grocery shopping nearby, so I walked toward the nearby grocery store.
When I reached the store, she was pleased to see her mother. I handed her off to her mother, and she soon stopped crying. While she was with her mother, I paced around the shop and talked to my friend.
Her Mom was inspecting the vegetables, and while the shopkeeper was not looking, she picked some vegetables and tossed them in the nearby drain. She’s a very mischievous child, and when I scolded her for being so, she laughed back at me like she always does. I went to her and picked her up again because she looked adorable.
There’s also a fast food stall beside the Vegetable Vendor, and when I picked her up, she saw it and shouted, “Noodles” . I did not pay much attention because I was talking to my friend.
She gets angry when I don’t pay attention to her, so she flicked her hand at my ear to try to get my attention. Unfortunately, I was still wearing my AirPods, and when she flicked her hand, an AirPod went flying.
I think time stopped in that split second. I wish I had better instincts because the AirPod took a good second to bounce off the tarmac beside the vegetable shop and off into the drain. I saw the exact point where the airport disappeared into the black, sludgy water of the drain and squatted on the road to look for it. My friend was still on the phone and, following this whole story through my commentary, told me to cut the phone and look for it.
Soon, the little kid’s Mom started looking for it, trying to help me.
Let me try to describe the drain. It was just beside a vegetable stall, and the water was pitch black. The flashlights on our phone were not helping much, and the guy running the vegetable shop soon came to help.
I remembered that iPhones can track lost AirPods, so I started up the Find My Phone app. To my delight, it connected to the AirPod despite having a weak signal. I ran the phone on top of the still black sludge of the drain, and my eyes would sparkle whenever the app displayed a strong signal. I tried to “fish” out the AirPods with a stick, but since they were not visible at all, finding them was difficult.
By now, some onlookers were curious about what we were doing, and when we told them we were finding an AirPod, most of them told me that it had probably stopped working by now.
Hearing this, the mother of the kid asked me how much it cost, and since I did not remember the price, I said something like 10,000. After saying that, I also realized that this thing was expensive and started looking for it harder. The fact that my phone was still receiving a signal meant it was still there somewhere, and I did not want to give up. Something came onto me, and I dipped my bare, raw hands in that disgusting drain, trying to find the AirPod in the general area where the signal was coming from.
I searched for 5 minutes, but it did not turn up. At this point, My hand smelt like hell itself, and I decided to give up. The shopkeeper also gave me a basket to try and filter out some of the sludge,
but the drain had a lot of water, and even though the water was still, nothing turned up even using that.
Dejected, I returned home and washed my hands for 5 minutes to remove the dirt my hands had accumulated, but the stench would not just go away.
I also told my Mom and sister what had happened, and my Mom started to scold me. Meanwhile, I searched my Amazon purchases to find out the price of the AirPods so that I could decide whether to cry over the lost AirPod or let it go. To my amazement, they cost 16000, much more than I thought they did.
On top of that, I had recently quit my job and was currently unemployed, which had made me a huge miser, and my sister and I headed out again to look for it.
On reaching the shop, I opened the tracking app on my phone, and it connected to the AirPod again. I was amazed at how resilient this little device was. It was buried deep in the dark drain somewhere,
but it had refused to die and was still broadcasting a signal, a cry for help
Seeing as I was desperate to find it, the vegetable seller guy brought a spade and started removing the sludge from the drain. At the same time, I ran my phone over it like I was metal detecting.
Soon, more people gathered around, asking what we were looking for in the drain. All people were giving different answers based on either their guess or
their intent to just humor themselves.
- A rare coin of 500 rs, a guy said
- We are catching fish in this drain, another guy said to amuse himself.
I was almost about to give up when I received a strong signal from my AirPod. I hoped to find it this time, so I held my breath and dipped my hand into the disgusting drain again. In retrospect, I could have used gloves instead of dipping my hands in that raw sludge, but I was too excited at that time to think of this. You cannot even imagine when I felt the plastic texture of my lone AirPod inside that dark sludge. Quickly but carefully, I tightly held the AirPod and brought it out. I had a face full of a big grin now that my mission was complete. The crowd had now started to disperse.
I carried that AirPod back home and rinsed it underwater. I then sprayed an unholy amount of disinfectant on its inside and the outside and left it to dry. I did not touch it for a couple of days. Who knows what kind of germs could have been on it? I was not putting it inside my ear so soon.