American Adventures - III

Time: Saturday early morning 1:30 Am
Place : My rented apartment

It was a perfect weekend until that moment. I had couple of beers, a nice English movie and an extended discussion over the story line with my roomies just before getting under my cozy comforter. I was finding peace! Then my phone rang.
Tring…. Tring….
I saw the number and it was from my friend, let us call him ‘X’

X: I need a help
Me: Yes X, Where are you?
X: In jail and I need you to get me out
Me: What?

In slice of moment, a stream of thoughts went across my mind. All I know about US jails is like this. The people in captivity are given one phone call in which they usually call their attorney. Then there will be a stream of procedures to get the person out of custody. The victim or the accused will be made to sit in a small room with one side transparent mirror. There will be two to three police officers looking at them and the person who comes in can meet the accused in the room. I had a feeling, things will be different here.
Then the question came, what will I do, when and how!
Now, back to the call

Me: ok tell me what happened and what you want me to do.
X: Come here with a sum of 400 $ and call me up on my number. I am at xxx Jail. Will you come?
Me: yes, don’t worry; I will be there soon with money. But what did you do? How you end up in jail?
X: I will tell you when we meet, you will come na ?
Me: Is this the only call available for you or you can call me again?
X: I can call you again!
Me: Call me after 5 minutes with directions to this place and the exact amount I will require and the procedure I need to follow. OK?
X: Yes..

My fellow roomie have a car and I got him out of bed, got him ready, opened GMAP to find the driving directions from the name I got. We laughed on thinking that we might end up in jail because we had couple of beers three hours back. But the need of the hour pushed us out. We got into the car and drove to the nearest ATM to get money. We were scared to get out of the car in the early morning. We have heard stories about mugging near ATM in and around mid nights. So we went for a drive-in ATM with the other two guys watching the surrounding when I took money. It was a funny moment because we weren’t scared much but none was brave enough to get out.

As usual we got to the place where map took us but we couldn’t find the Jail. We roamed around to find a nearest rail station and parked our car. We went on playing around with GMAP over the mobile phone to find out where exactly we are! My friend who got up in the jail called two times checking if we are on the way. The second update I gave him was not the best one would expect.

X: where r u ?
Me: Actually we are in a place which is meant to be next to the place you told us, but we are not sure if we are there, where we are meant to be! (There might be grammatical mistakes, but this is what I said)
Me: We lost our way to the place, we will reach there in another say 5 minutes.
X: What? Ok….

Finally we found another police vehicle with a police officer in the parking lot and got the directions from him. It was the next junction and a huge building which we drove past. The officer said, it was too big to be missed, but we missed! We parked our car on the jail parking lot and walked towards the reception. We could see couple of men walking in and a big officer standing on the corridor talking to another woman. We went in and the officer at reception asked us to leave any metal object or cell phone. We kept cell phones and came back. The officer at reception asked my friend’s last name and I didn’t know how to spell it correctly. It was a long name! After three rounds of me telling it out, she (the officer) handed me a pen and a notebook to right it down. I gave a spelling which is the closest to the correct from my guess work. She managed to pull out his photo and the charge sheet on her computer and confirmed him with us, saying this is the guy we are looking for.

. The officer said I had to give 350 $ for some ticket amount and a 13 $ amount for some bond fees. She also mentioned that I need to have 350 exact change on one hand and 13 $ exact change on the other hand! All we had was twenty 20 $ bills from the ATM. We looked each other and I did something stupid. I asked the officer at the reception if she had change for 5 $ as fives 1 $ to make 13 $. Then we had to empty our all our valet on the near by wait area to sort out an exact change of 13$ and 350 $. Then we were directed to the next room. A big white painted room with three metal grilled and glass covered window. There three officers sitting on the other side and the room some how reflected a gloomy place. The officers were afro Americans and one lady officer there confirmed with me if I got exact change as mentioned by the reception officer. Then she went ahead with the procedures of taxing in the amount I handed over and filled in two envelopes, my guess would be bond fees and ticket amount with exact change!

Once it was over, she gave me a receipt and said, the process is over and they don’t know how much time it will take for the guy to come out. There were two other like us, one father who was there for his kid and another lady for her client. We all went out and sat in the waiting area for our friend to come out. It was around 4:30 in the morning and the chairs where not so comfortable to sleep or dozz off.
When we were waiting, a tall, old looking man passed us. Another officer, he came back to us and asked

Officer: You came to bail out some one?
Me: Yes, Our friend is in there.
Officer: Procedures complete?
Me : Yes
Officer: It will take another 2 to 4 hours for him to come out. Where are you from?
Me: we are from India.
Officer: Which part?
Me: Kerala, South state.
Officer: Where in Kerala?

I was a little surprised to see some one who knows about places in Kerala out there in US as a jail officer.

Me: Trivandrum, Sir where are you from
Officer: I am from Kottayam, have been here for last 20 years! Let me see If I can help you. What’s your friend’s name again?
Me: X…

Where ever you go, you will find a malayali, but never thoguht I will find a Malayali officer in a US jail
He went to the computer screen, checked and came back.

Officer: I think he will be out in another 30 minutes.
Me: Thanks a lot.

My friend marched out of the long corridor with a not so proud face. He was looking for his back pack. He collected it from the reception and started towards our car. Ironically our topic of discussion at that moment was what to cook once we reach home, which will be 5:30 am in the morning. All of us where damn hungry, by just visiting a jail to bail out some one!

I was comparing what would have been the scene if it was in our country? First of all jail or police station, it will not be 24 X 7 to go there at 2:30 am. Even we go there, there might not be a single person, awake enough to talk and check if we are there for the right person. Even if there is, we (who ever went there) will go through a series of questions on who, why, what to get the person out! But none happened here. It was a different experience! About lessons learned, When going to American jails for bails, keep the change!