The Unpleasant Evening

Tuesday – the day before yesterday – evening was another ordinary one in my very ordinary life. But I learned a few important lessons. I discovered that the chances of a simple Democratic Politics assignment causing a man to contract a terrible disease are quite high. Fate also sent me a reminder of how crazy my sister can be sometimes.

So first : the assignment. Of course, this was announced weeks ago and I started working on it only on Tuesday, but that's besides the point. I reached home and discovered, much to my irritation that my printer was out of order. It's inexplicable how printers always fail to work at crucial times like this. Well, it's also a phenomenon we witness very often. So. What did I do? I took what I needed from the net and put it into a document. I saved it and sent it to myself along with a very rough draft of a radio show presentation we have to do soon.

I fished out a hundred rupee note from my father's wallet and ran down this stairs.

“It won't cost you so much, don't take a hundred!” my father called after me. “And I'm positive he won't have change,” he admonished.

I went on without heeding his words.

I walked all the way to a nearby Internet cafe, dodging puddles with every step. Ah, forgive me for not making a reference to the rains and puddles earlier. It's been pouring in Chennai for the past two days and we even got a rain holiday yesterday, i.e., on Monday. As per the Fundamental Law of Rain Holidays, there was hardly a drop of precipitation yesterday, but today, when we did have to go to school, the downpours were heavy.

Where was I again? Ah yes, I managed to reach the cafe in a short time and began using one of the comps there. And almost broke down in tears. Why? Because I use Linux. The document containing all the necessary things was saved in a format that couldn't be opened in Windows. However, the radio show presentation, which was only of secondary importance, I had converted into a doc file.

Swearing at myself, I asked the man in the cafe to print out the radio show thingy. He did so, and I offered him the hundred rupee note I had. He shrugged at me and said, “no change.”

I went from one shop to other begging for change but none of them had any. So I informed the man at the cafe that I was going home to fetch some change and he said OK. So I walked all the way back home. And it was dark then, so I wasn't very successful in not getting wet. I kept ending up in puddles and I'm probably infected with leptospirosis now. Simply fabulous.

I reached home, came to know that my father didn't have change (To add to my displeasure, my father made a few 'I told you so' kind of remarks.) and got some from my grandfather. Back at my place, I converted the assignment into a doc file. I tried to send it to myself, but hey... What did my Internet choose to do then? You guessed it. It wasn't working.

I went back to the Internet cafe, got wet again, and doubled my chances of getting infected. I reached there, told the man that I had some more work, collected all the necessary stuff for the assignment for the second time, payed the guy and left, walking homeward. Needless to say I got wet and dirty again.

I found a familiar face at home – it was the guy who'd come to repair the printer. He spent some time fiddling with it. That's when my sister was having a bath and I got a phone call.

Five minutes into the phone call, I heard my sister's voice. She was shouting from the washroom.

“Get me my umbrella!”

“What?!” I asked.

“My umbrella!”

“Why?”

“I need it!”

“But you're having a bath!” I protested.

My sister made a travesty of my protest and began to scream at me. I consulted my friend who was still on the phone, and after endless speculation we came to the conclusion that an umbrella was absolutely useless when one was bathing. Why, the very purpose of bathing is to get wet.

I tried to point this our to my sister, but she was in no mood for logical thinking.

“Just get me my umbrella.”

“OK.”

I went to my room, opened her umbrella and tried to close it, but wasn't able to do so. I had to walk all the way to the other room with an open umbrella. I met the printer repair guy on this journey and he looked at me as if I was an “unidentified UFO,” as a friend of mine would say.

So I gave my sister the umbrella. My friend and I had a nice laugh over the phone though I felt bitter on the inside.

This was one of those many days that made me want to get sucked into a black hole / vanish into oblivion.