TheCaseOfTheValueAddedDoor

Sulekha 26 February 2002

The Case of the Value Added Door

tinmoorthy

It was past midnight when I reached Hong Kong from Seoul. I had gone to Korea to present a paper on software maintenance. By the time Bill (short for brother-in-law) brought me to his apartment, it was one-thirtyish in the morning. I parked my luggage somewhere on the floor where I found space. I slammed the door shut.

Then there was pandemonium.

I was not supposed to have slammed the door shut -- I was told later. I couldn't have closed it gently either. There were reasons.

The doors there close from the inside. There are no handles on the outside. Then how does one get inside -- that is, from the outside? Either somebody obliges you from the inside or else you have the key.

The key -- yes, the whole story is about the key -- or more precisely its absence.

Although I surmised that all the locks might open to the same key, they (the keys) can never be located when you need them. The keys were made by the building contractor once upon a time, it is generally believed. The first occupant lost the keys or was plain indifferent -- nobody has ever heard of the keys thereafter. It might cost a dollar or two to make duplicates. Not surprisingly, later occupants neither had the time, opportunity nor the mood to order the duplicates. The situation continues even today -- from tenant to tenant.

Since there are no keys, you shall not close the door from the outside. That is Rule Number 1. If you break Rule Number 1 then you are referred to Rule Number 2. It says that you shall not violate Rule Number 1. Between Rules 1, 2 and the door, you find that the door can only be broken.

That was what I had done. To make matters worse, eighteen-month-old Munna was sleeping inside. And there was no way of getting inside. The building was nineteen storeyed and we were on the thirteenth -- nothing could have been more unpropitious!

Bill started making frantic calls. On advice from Ashok, Bill brought a screwdriver. It did not work. He tried a nail cutter. That too failed. Sanjay suggested the situation was grave enough to warrant a call to the fire fighting forces. It was then, suddenly, that I realized the magnitude of the problem. Something had to be done before Munna woke up, found out that Mommy was not in the vicinity and it was time for his next feed. We couldn't call the fire fighters and ask them to start ramming the door now. It would be plain inviting trouble.

I surveyed all the items that I could lay my hands on immediately -- some cottage cheese, a courtesy beer can, chocolates and free literature -- nothing to enthuse a bright spark.

I imagined I was James Bond and tried to visualize what should I be doing. Ian Fleming would insist that his (Bond's) latest find, namely the villain's moll, should have been locked up inside the jammed door. The psyche of James Bond would then work sharp and quickly determine the only solution to the problem.

I studied the other doors in the flat. Fortunately they were all alike. Possibly they would have all responded to the same key as I mentioned earlier, but that was beside the point.

On my jacket was a tag on which were inscribed my name, nationality, organization and a title. I had not thrown it away as I had left the seminar in a hurry to catch my flight. In order to promise a good seating, the portion of the tag that goes inside the coat pocket was somewhat long. The whole element was made of flexible plastic.

The dog in the door's latch has a curve to support slam shutting. On the other side it is not so -- in fact it prevents the latch from readily opening. Inspection of other closed doors revealed that a small gap was promised between the door material and the jamb. I assumed James Bond would have been happy to notice that. To me, it represented a tolerance to be built in the mass manufacture of the doors to guarantee a generic compatibility to other components.

I slipped the longer side of the plastic tag into the gap of another closed door, now brought under trial. The sheet could be maneuvered and could be passed between the dog and the frame of the door. A slight obliging movement of the dog was found sufficient, surprisingly, to make the door open with as much ease as one could with an original key. Two or three successful trials later, we repeated the drill on the door under manipulation. The trick worked well. Munna was assured of his next feed.

[Statutory Warning: The feats described have been performed by experts in the respective fields. At the risk of getting addicted, you are advised against practicing them!]

The exercise was successful, not so much because we analyzed the situation carefully, but because the doors had been manufactured on an assembly line. Their construction and manipulation were predictable. That was the value addition to an otherwise dumb door during the mass manufacture.

Every Indian household in Hong Kong now may not have the necessary keys to the doors. Till recently they sought a screwdriver, a nail cutter and a sledge hammer -- in that order. Lately, the first item has been replaced by a plastic tag. Couples arriving in Hong Kong are now advised about how and where to get this survival kit.

You heard the story. I am grateful. You got the message from the value added door -- now please do not ask me if the story is true.
 

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