Getting the security thing down…

The locks on our doors (and everyone’s doors, I believe) are different from standard locks and keys in the US, and, I think, less convenient. You need a KEY to get in from the outside, AND you need a key to open the door from the INSIDE if the door has been locked. The difficulty with this system: If you are alone in the house and you lock the door and leave the key inside, other family members coming from the outside cannot open the door even with their keys. So generally, you remove the inside key from the lock so that others coming later can open the door. But then when the doorbell rings or you need to go out, there is a mad scramble to find the keys so that you can open the door even from the inside. One solution would be to ensure that you have a hook near the door for easy key-access; and to make sure that at least one set of keys is hanging there at all times. (We haven’t done this yet) But why this system? Amnon has been planning to replace the lock with a more western lock. One of his Indian acquaintances, though,  (let’s call him Ram) said that a system that requires key access from the outside only is not a good one for India. Ram said that you need to be able to bolt people INSIDE the house without easy egress. Ram had a plumber working at his house, and happened to see his camera tucked away somewhere outside of his house. The lore here is that workmen in your apartment can take things and hide them somewhere outside of your house if they have easy, keyless entry and exit. Then, even if you do check their bags when they officially leave, they will have already extracted whatever they wanted. Yuk. This does not resonate with my polyannish-world views; nor with my world view that everyone is basically good; that people will like us when they know us; and that people that like us would never do bad things….