The Pocket guide to living at AIIMS – Part I – Managing your room lock

Petty crimes are everywhere, including AIIMS hostels.

Besides students, the hostels are inhabited by a fair number of employees – Mess attendees, cleaning personnel and the like. And a few of these are unable to resist the temptation of picking up an Ipod or a wallet full of cash.

NOTE: If you are one of such people, PLEASE – take the cash, but you can’t use the ID cards or photographs in there. So just leave them behind, will you? Thank you!

And then, there are the students.

Yeah, one would think that medical students wouldn’t really need to steal from each other. And that’s correct in 99.99% cases. But depravity exists everywhere, not to mention kleptomania. Yeah, I’m not kidding. Dead serious.

So how do these robberies occur?

At your home, you don’t need to lock your room every time you step out of it to have a snack or go to the bathroom. Entry to your house is restricted by a central checkpoint (Your main gate) which creates a large “trusted zone” within which you can operate without bothering about locks.

But at the hostel, the trusted zone ends the moment you step out of your room.

After spending a major part of your life living under the former scenario, Locking your door every time you step out is an irritating activity, at least in the beginning.

This is what a random anonymous room latch in AIIMS hostels looks like. There’s one latch associated with a lock and one latch without a lock (You can still hang one there, if you want to.)

I humbly present…

HOW TO MANAGE YOUR ROOM LATCH AND AVOID GETTING ROBBED

Scenario A

The foolproof way to avoid getting robbed is to lock your gate EVERY SINGLE TIME you step out of your room. I can’t stress this enough. This is the only way you can reduce your probability of getting robbed to negligible.

What it looks like:

Or

Probability of getting robbed - Close to zero. There are plenty of other options for a potential robber. He won’t try to break your lock unless he’s a real stalker.

Muscular effort required – Slam the bolt, find your key, insert the key, rotate 360 degrees, Remove the key.

Time required – 5 seconds

PROS: Safest
CONS: Large amounts of time and effort needed. And if you’re an alcoholic, you’re going to have to sleep outside your room every night.

Scenario B

Just sliding the bolt with the lock on it to make it appear like scenario A.

What it looks like:

Probability of getting robbed – Low. With hundreds of locked bolts that look exactly like your unlocked bolt, a potential robber will have no way of determining whether its really locked or not unless he tries every bolt he comes across. Its a simple matter of protective comouflage. Very effective.

Muscular effort required – Slam the bolt

Time Required – 1 second

PROS: Reasonably safe, Takes just one second and very low muscular effort. You reap the benefits without sowing the seeds.
CONS: Probability of getting robbed not zero.

Scenario C

Leaving both bolts completely open.

What it looks like:

Probability of getting robbed - Medium. This method is effective, but much riskier. Basically it makes it appear like you’re still in your room at present. If there’s music playing inside your room, the probability of getting robbed decreases further. But from the point of view of a robber, all he needs to do is push the door open and apologise for his “mistake” in case there is actually someone in the room.

Muscular effort required – None

Time required – None

PROS: No time or effort required.
CONS: Medium risk of getting robbed.

Scenario D

Sliding the wrong bolt.

What it looks like:

Probability of getting robbed – High. Come on dude. Just look at it. Its obvious that you’re not in your room (otherwise it wouldn’t have been closed), and its obvious there’s no lock. Why don’t you just write “Please rob me” on your door?

Muscular effort required – Slam the bolt

Time required – 1 second

PROS: None
CONS: Everything. This method sucks. Period.

Final Word: Scenario A is what you should try to get used to as fast as possible. Do it until it becomes instinctive. But if you don’t have the time (or are just incredibly lazy) Scenario B is for you. No other scenario is worth the risk.