Up or Down - II

Waiting for an elevator (and so many of these episodes occur from the elevator lobbies, don’t they? Nothing GOOD every happens to me waiting for an elevator.) … I’ve pressed the button to go “UP“. It is lit.

Shuffling flinchy ratty type comes up, gets REAL close to the call button, and presses “DOWN,” and then “UP” repeatedly. Punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch. Beat. Punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch. Beat. Punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch. Until the damn car arrives.

Okay, so someone’s impatient…

We both get on the car, to go UP but it goes down first (since the as* pressed the down button too…) me to Floor 7, Ratty to Floor 5. I press “7″ once. It lights up. Ratty, of course, gets WAY into the space of the button panel, and vigorously and repeated hits “5″ with alternate hands… reminds me of the Jackie Chan movie I saw yesterday… Punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch. Beat. Punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch. Beat. Punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch. Beat. Until we get to the fifth floor. Somehow I think he feels that if he does not repeatedly remind the elevator to stop at 5th Floor, it won’t… I wonder what did his parents do to him… Or maybe he believes the elevators were somehow powered by his vigorous button-pushery, like those wind-up Y2K transistor radios.

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Travel travails… (Part II)

Warning: Read Part I first!

‘Sweating like a pig’… Do you know what that phrase means… I know it and I know it far too graphically. It was 11am of a very humid Mumbai morning and I was drenched… I did not sweat as much even when I was giving my board exams and while reading my physics question paper I realized that all questions seemed alien to me…But then I am getting ahead of myself here… let me recount what happened in my journey… The guy who had previously asked to exchange seats with my friend was back with a new DEMAND…

I have never been posh… but what with the appraisal and all I was feeling like a million dollars… I had carried shorts and changed into them from the rather uncomfortable jeans that I was wearing (ofcourse I had double checked that Sush was not in any of the compartments – including the two tier AC compartment) which was a core part of my ‘shining armor’ (read more about the shining armor)… 15 minutes had passed hence I had resumed watching Mystery, Alaska and that ‘guy’ asks… “Bhai saab, would you happen to have an extra pair of shorts…?” I looked at him… I didn’t know what to tell him… then just when I thought of giving him a treatment similar to the one that my friend had given… he adds… “You know these terecot trousers are not very comfortable… there is no breathing space…” Obviously this guy was not aware that there is such a concept as ‘too much information’… It’s moments like these when you realize your true love… blogging… There was a guy asking for my shorts, I mean my honor was at stake and all I could think about was how good a post this would make… go figure…

The friend came to my rescue… he quickly interjected saying… “How much is your gold chain worth?”… Finally he slept off on his berth forming a deathly grasp around his luggage…

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Travel: Hope Floats…

Just back from the most perfect holiday… well as the title says it was almost perfect… I am still unsure what was missing but I am sure that as I recount my experiences I will find it…

You know that scene when Rajnikanth finds out that he has two villains to kill but is left with only one bullet… yeah, I know life’s a bitch… so… what are you gonna do?

Something like that happened with me too… I had been planning for a vacation for a long, long, long time and nothing interesting was forthcoming… Some or the other thing always got messed up… sometimes my friends weren’t free, sometimes I wasn’t available, and sometimes the wallets did not permit… I mean going on an intergalactic ride needs a space shuttle and building a spacecraft does not exactly cost peanuts which my company pays… so… I was doomed…

But then one of the training that I went thru’ came to my rescue… the training was pretty unique too… It was about ‘around the world, without a penny’… and that is what I did… I spent rupees… lots of them… the amount would have been enough to pay for a dinner of four at Tandoor (an upscale restaurant) at Bangalore….

So I went home got out all the wedding invitations I had received and did that ‘inky-pinky-ponky’ routine and hooray! I won a chance to visit Mumbai and attend a friend’s wedding (Not my first choice but I was sure that I did not want to spend a fortune on attending a wedding in US)… it was a blessing in disguise… I could visit the glam cap of India… (glam cap means glamour capital which means spaghetti tops and micro minis, stilleto heels and lacy underthings… I am getting ahead of myself here…) So… I was excited…(I am talking about my mood here…)

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