A Camera, A Stranger,
And a Courier That
Lost the Plot.

It started in Goa. A group trip, a rented cab, and one camera left behind when the car was returned. By the time anyone noticed, the cab had already been taken by another customer — a complete stranger.

Two days of calls to the cab owner, messages to everyone in the chain — nothing. The camera appeared to be gone. I came back to Hyderabad and quietly accepted it.

Then, a week later: an Instagram DM from a woman I had never met. She was the next passenger in that same cab. Her mother, while packing at the end of their trip, had unknowingly swept the camera into their bag.

This woman went through the camera's videos. In one of them, I mentioned the organisation I work for. She used Google Lens to find the organisation. She found their LinkedIn page. She found my name. She came to Instagram. She found me. She sent a message.

A complete stranger, with no tools except the internet and genuine human decency, performed a multi-step cross-platform search to return something that wasn't hers. I arranged for a friend in Gurgaon to collect it. We booked DTDC — home pickup — on 28th March 2026. Expected delivery: 7th April.

The camera that a stranger moved heaven and earth to return has now been lost by a professional courier for over 44 days. DTDC has no confirmed location for it. Two agents gave two different locations in the same hour. Not a single callback has been made despite being promised on every one of my 20+ calls.

This page exists to document what happened — accurately, factually, and completely. And to ensure that no one ships anything irreplaceable through DTDC without knowing what the experience might look like.