Ah, it feels heavenly to blog after a hiatus!

This post marks the start of a new series in this blog: The Daily Blunder.

Everyone has his/her own embarrassing moments; weird situations which would turn them beetroot-red in embarrassment. People do strange things trying to cover all those momentous gaffes up, burying them in the deepest recesses of their mind…

Not me.

I make ten times as many blunders as any normal guy. Perhaps I’m a tad too retarded ’cause the dumb things I do would make even Tom & Jerry seem ‘The Godfather‘-esque! And I don’t give a bloody damn about publicizing my faux pas! Hope you people will find the series as interesting as my previous posts…

It was a very very fine morning. Extremely fine, till I was rudely shaken up from the company of Mr Morpheus (not the one of ‘The Matrix‘ fame!) by my Mom shouting at the top of her voice at 7:30 AM, that is. Due to some, ahem, ‘extra-curricular activities’ in the previous night, it was a bit late when I’d hit the sack. (Not porn you evil mind! I had a website to design and upload. And that too, in JUST three hours!!) Four hours sleep is mandatory for me to stay conscious all day. I hadn’t even clocked two hours of sleep that night. Groggily, I shoved off the bedsheet, went upstairs and brushed my teeth only to realize the fact in horror. I was late, and I had to reach college by 8.45 that day!

After a dressing-up session which lasted five minutes precise (and would even put Darsheel to shame), I gobbled up a couple of Dosas with my always-punctilious dad looking daggers at me for perennially being late. I was wearing a worn-out pair of jeans and a gross, orange shirt which curiously made me resemble Munnabhai MBBS. For a few invigorating minutes, I pictured myself in Sanjay Dutt‘s celebrated role, hurriedly converting his home into a hospital in that ‘Subah Ho gayi mamu’ song. Another Darsheel moment. Dad had to slap me hard in the back, to bring me back to the real world!! I hate my life! Don’t I even have the freedom to day dream?!

Well, Munna cost me dearly, so to speak. Would you believe my luck? Just as I was rushing out of my house, all dressed up and bag on shoulder, my neighbour had left!! And he was waving back at me instead of asking his dad to stop the car. It was already 8:10 and I badly needed a miracle to reach Sreekariyam on time, so as to catch the college bus which was my only ticket to reach college by 8:45. I realized I didn’t have much choice. I ran. I ran till my lungs burned! After sprinting for about two hundred metres, I stopped, panting, longing for some water. Guess what, I’d forgotten my water bottle in all the frazzle! Swearing, I waved at the Yamaha Gladiator that swiftly approached me. The man was kind, he offered me a lift! If I had money in my purse, I’d gladly have gifted it to him in all the happiness!!

Two minutes in his bike, and I was swearing again. I’d rather have walked all the way. This dude was such a slowcoach. It was almost 8:25 AM!, over 15 minutes after I’d started from home, when we reached Sreekariyam! No sooner did he stop, I jumped out of his bike. I was in luck! The bus had just arrived at the stop. The benevolent conductor was trying his luck with this cute first year girl, so I had enough time to reach the bus. I ran. I didn’t notice a white-clad male figure in my way, first. My eyes were at the cream colored college-bus, revving its engine. I shoved the white-clad guy off with my right hand and sprinted as fast as I can. At that opportune moment, I felt a searing pain on my right forearm. Something sharp had brushed my hand. As I looked back, I realized the blunder of my life.

The guy I’d hit was the exasperated traffic policeman!!!

I’d caught him off-handed and had almost pushed him down squarely onto the road. He started showering me with a volley of choicest abuses and was now chasing me. I muttered a quick apology and galloped to the bus, quickly getting in through the back door; an instant before the bus started. Within a couple of seconds time, the bus had outmaneuvered the policeman. Thankfully, the traffic at the junction was a tad too high for the cop to ignore his duties and pursue his attacker. Shuddering in relief, I sat down in an empty seat. Few had noticed my rendezvous with the cop; those first years who had seen the incident were chuckling (not loudly though, I was a pretty-famous third year at college, after all!!)

Nevertheless, the policeman did have the last laugh. The pain on my forearm was actually a bruise he had inflicted with the sharp end of his whistle in all the rage. It was extremely painful and took a week to get cured.

My bruised hand!

Now, whenever I see a traffic policeman on the road, I make it a point to stay a couple of metres away from him!!

Change, we all can believe in.

If you’ll forgive the pun on the C-word (a usage I ostensibly copied from our latest friendly-neighborhood Mr. Uncle Sam himself), I’ve revamped my blog! Hey, no big deal; just a new header, not to mention a few minor touch-ups. (In case you’re wondering why I wrote that sentence, well, I’ve to cater to visually impaired readers reading my blog using Text to Speech tools!)

Alright, hardcore techies might still guffaw at me for not moving over to a snazzier third-party template, but I have my reasons to stick on to Minima. The first being lack of time and infrastructure (Parental restrictions!!) to actually work on (read: “edit”) a new template. Again, I’m not exactly into flashy eye-catching templates which might score a point with aesthetics but would reduce the overall appeal of my content. Btw, here’s a piece of info that might want you to switch over to Minima if you’re blogging in Blogger. ‘Minima’ is a Search Engine Optimized theme! (Source: Mani Karthik, the SEO guru). I’ve tried to truly incorporate the allusion to The Matrix, this time. That’s the Matrix code you see in the background of my header, rendered using, surprise-surprise, just Photoshop! If you raise eyebrows at the presence of the ‘blue’ pill adjacent to the red one, well it’s just to emphasize my ‘choice’ of the red pill.

Speaking of the header, something interesting happened while I was Photoshopping it . First of all, the revamp wasn’t a planned idea. I was bored and utterly jobless, thanks to parents’ strict stand against my attending the Film Festival at college scheduled that day. I was even forbidden from attending a combined birthday party by friends (where I too was supposed to chip in). The revamp-idea came as a quick recreational brainwave, just before my second nap that day. Within no time, my soon-to-die monitor flickeringly showed the Photoshop window and I started working.

I’d rendered the Matrix-code part when the doorbell rang. I opened the door with great trepidation, for I had a birthday present-parcel on its way from Kolkata sent by Abhi chettan (best friend-mentor-bro), and It could arrive anytime. A mid-aged, contorted-faced man, clutching a couple of files in one hand and a jute bag in the other shoulder stared at me. He was too low-key and ragged-dressed to be a parcel-delivery-guy. No sooner did he catch a glimpse of me, his face contorted further to display a wide array of facial gestures which included something that remotely looked like a smile.

“നമസ്കാരം സാര്‍! ഞാന്‍ ഒരു എഴുത്തുകാരന്‍ ആണ്. ഇതാ ഞാന്‍ എഴുതിയ ചില ലേഖനങ്ങള്‍…”(Greetings, sir! I’m an author. Here are some of the books I published/I’m about to publish)

He opens his file and shows some news paper cuttings dated back to a couple of decades. It sounded real, for most of the articles had his pics in them.

“ഞാന്‍ ബാലചന്ദ്രമേനോന്‍റെ അസ്സിസ്റ്റന്‍റ് ആയിരുന്നു. ഫിലിം ഇന്‍സ്ടിടുടില്‍ പഠിച്ചിട്ടുണ്ട്”(I’ve assisted Balachandramenon, the ace director and I’ve studied in the film institute too!)

He digs another pic from the file which has him standing adjacent to Mr Menon in a group photo. A close up pic with him looking into the lens as Mr Menon looks on, is also shown. I watch with measured skepticism. All his articles were paper cuttings. They might not have been forged, cause the paper seemed old.

The assured tone of his voice now meliorates into a mildly-entreating one.

“പക്ഷെ സാര്‍, ഇവയെല്ലാം പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിക്കാന്‍ എന്റെ കയ്യില്‍ കാശില്ല. സാര്‍ കുറച്ച് കാശ് തന്നു സഹായിക്കാമോ? ഒരു പത്ത് രൂപ…” (But sir, I don’t have money to publish these books, if you could give me ten bucks…)

Aha! So he’s our home-grown beggar. The intellectual variety, that is. I employed my standard f**k-off line.

“അയ്യോ! ഇവിടെ ഞാന്‍ മാത്രമേ ഉള്ളു. കാശിരിപ്പില്ലല്ലോ!”(I’m sorry, but I’m alone here and there’s not a single pie at the moment.)

And I wasn’t entirely lying! I’m almost bankrupt, so to speak.

“കുറച്ച് നാണയങ്ങള്‍ എങ്കിലും കാണമല്ല്ലൊ. അതെങ്കിലും തന്നൂടെ?”(Couldn’t you give a couple of coins please?)

By now, I noticed something in his voice that moved me. Was it a tinge of earnestness? Was it lack of opportunity? Was it a talented but weary man fighting for survival in the dog-eat-dog world?

Without uttering a word, I took my purse and gave him the sole ten rupee note left in it. The man smiled, joined his hands in a “Thank you!” gesture, closed the gate, and moved on… He might’ve been an impostor. He didn’t even give a name. And, any low-key guy could easily forge documents in his own favour. Like gazillions of blunders I’ve committed in my lifetime, my gesture might’ve been a momentous dumb-act.

But, ten years down the line, I could be him.

P.S.

A few minutes later, another woman came to me with a uniquely-fake style requesting for money to foot the bill of her husband’s operation. I asked her to f**k-off.