How attending a wedding helped me find my wallet: The story starts with Afrah’s wedding. She hired a Photographer from Instagram who happened to be my senior in school. My cousin had also hired him for her wedding a few years back. I had no contact with him during my school years or after my cousin’s wedding, so both the hirings were random. But it’s a small place, so it’s not unbelievable that they hired the same photographer.

One month after Afrah’s wedding, I am in Kolkata for work. Walking back from the office, I felt like I didn’t have my wallet on me. I rushed back to the office to check but it was in my bag all along. Anyway, I headed back to the hotel after stopping for munchies. Came back. Slept. The next day my cousin (same as mentioned earlier) in Andhra Pradesh called me at 6 am asks me if I lost my wallet. I couldn’t make any sense of that call. I checked and she was right I didn’t have my wallet. She told me she received a call from someone who found it on the road yesterday and they wanted to return it back. But why and how would they call my cousin?

Apparently, the only number that was available in my wallet was the number of the photographer from his visiting card that I received at Afrah’s wedding. The person who found my wallet was nice enough to call the photographer but he didn’t have my number either. So the call got routed to my cousin.

Basically, my irresponsible ass dropped the wallet when I was buying munchies and this person happened to spot it on that busy office road, just lying there. If that visiting card wasn’t in my wallet, there is no way he could have contacted me to return it even if he wanted to, being the amazing person that he is. I met him later and got the wallet from him.

In all of this, I don’t know what’s more weird:

The fact that I thought I had lost my wallet half an hour before I actually lost it and still wasn’t careful with it. 

The fact that the person who found my wallet was nice/smart enough to call a random Photographer’s number in my wallet.

That fact that the photographer picked up a call from a random number.

The fact that if there was any other visiting card in my wallet, he wouldn’t be able to connect with me, even if he wanted to return my wallet.

BONUS: And you know what? On my flight back from Kolkata, I lost my wallet AGAIN. But I had a gut feeling that it was on the flight and I realised this after collecting my luggage. I immediately checked with the ground crew. Initially, they couldn’t find it near my seat. It has slipped away from the paper bag and rolled down 4 to 5 seats before mine. Again so many possibities here, I could have left the airport and then realised, someone else could have picked it up. But yes, my wallet loves me. At least this particular one.

Meet the main character:

Off note: The person who found my wallet was really, really sweet and I still think of it as the best ‘faith in humanity’ lesson that has happened to me and I hope this helps you return or find lost wallets.