Inked

For all my show of bravado and pompous declarations of fearlessness, I am actually a wimp at heart. I am wimpier than the proverbial 'scaredy-cat' and the touch-me-nots. Yellow, sissy, chicken, weakling, fraidy-cat, namby-pamby...but by now I suppose you get the drift.

One of my most cherished dreams has been to get tattooed. It took years of mustering courage and making three other friends get inked for me to finally manage to stagger into the snazzy tattoo parlour.

Months ago, I had been scouring the internet in search of the perfect design, but then I am not very easy to please.

"Do you have any designs I can select from?"

And the next thing I knew, I was swamped to the chin in design books, searching for anything that would catch my fancy. After about an hour of hopeless poring over countless designs, shortlisting, discarding, re-shortlisting and what not, my friend (you don't think I walked in there alone do you) had just about had it with me.

"Now you select something real quick or I'm off!", she threatened.

Suitably chastised, I quickly picked on the design that I had been eyeing for a while and decided that that was that.

The starting up of the tattoo machine was about the scariest noise I had ever heard. If you don't count the dentist's drill of course. I looked at the tattoo artist's face in the hope that he will be gentle with me, and saw this maniacal gleam of evil in his eyes.

"Oh god, I shall be very good, I shall never thumb my nose at passers-by, I shall always let elders sit on the last seat in an exceedingly crowded bus.....OUCH!"

The needle had pricked my skin. The first few minutes were terrifying as I tried to not hyperventillate and thrash about like a convict on the electric chair. But eventually, when I did come to my senses, I realised that it didn't quite hurt as much as I had envisaged. Unless he drew long uninterrupted strokes with the machine that is.

I sat there patiently, asking the artist tons of questions about the whole world while my friend thumbed through magazines. After an hour, it was over.

I am now officially stamped with a pair of gorgeous blue tulips.

New Shades

Yeah, again.

For some reason that I can't even begin to fathom, the trickiest task for me is being able to keep a pair of sunglasses safe and sound while using them to the fullest.

First it was those blasted monkeys that grabbed my sunglasses. Then it was those blasted evolved monkeys, or man, as they are commonly known, who grabbed my sunglasses. Oh, but I haven't told you about that now, have I?

Whilst vacationing in Gangtok, I took my sunglasses from my bag and kept them on the bed at my hotel room as I wasn't anticipating needing them. The day was cloudy and dark enough and my bag was overflowing with its usual junk and I had wanted to make some space. I locked the room carefully, put the heavy brass keys into my bag and went off touristing away.

When I came back, my glasses were missing. So were a few gobs of aloe vera gel from my friend's beauty kit.

I had to go and get new glasses made now. Story of my life. Sigh.

At least I have the last laugh. I wonder what the thief will do when he finds out he can't see properly through my sunglasses because they have my power built in?

Travel Travails

I am a seasoned traveller. That means I have travelled in all seasons. I am also a weathered traveller. That doesn't mean I travel in all weathers but rather that I am rusted and totally beat. And there's a sound reason for that.

On most occassions, the normal man flags down the ubiquitous autorickshaw, climbs in and zooms off directly to his prefered destination while in the Big Bad City. Snaking through trecherous terrain and serpentine rows of honking vehicles stuck in traffic jams while the merciless rain drums down relentlessly is quite the normal affair for the Common Man.

Unfortunately, as I have pointed out in my earlier compositions, whenever anything is applied in my context, it ceases to be normal or common anymore. The laws of physics hold good only so far. In case you were ever wondering where your hard earned tax money vanishes, then you'd be extremely gratified to know that over half of it is employed in funding reasearch of the Me phenomenon. No wonder our nation is forever in need of accomplished scientists.

Anyway, life throws quite interesting "common" problems my way. One of God's favourite ones is providing me with sufficient adventure and excitement while I am trying to reach the darn airport on time. His Chief of Staff has decided that my dull dreary life needs to be enlivened and the only time it is appropriate to do so is when I am in a mad dash to reach the airport in time for my flight.

So today, Mr. Chief of Staff (hereby refered to as CoS for brevity but mostly because I am too lazy to type such a long phrase again and again) decided to personally help me get to the airport.
Dad was out on the road waiting for our ubiquitous rickshaw to arrive. There was no sign of any. Of course when you don't want them, they keep getting in your way like an overgrown belly and often you have to walk around with a huge red-and-white signboard screaming "I do NOT want any autorickshaw".

After about ten whole minutes of frustrated waiting, we had to pick up my bags (which weighed about a ton with all the goodies mom makes for me - the 'overgrown belly' reference isn't entirely without a history of its own mind you) and start walking towards the main road in the hopes of getting one rick. We found one rather quickly after that and before the driver could change his mind, we parked ourselves with authority and got ready to be whisked away.

However, the minute the rickshaw turned the corner, one of its tyres got punctured. Muttering unprintable expletives under my breath ('coz my Dad was right there so I couldn't say them out aloud. We Indians pride oursleves on our culture) I clambered out and immediately started looking for another one.

The CoS was getting warmed up so there were no other rickshaws in sight. When dad finally managed to flag a couple, they refused to go to the airport and scooted off faster than the Roadrunner. Finally, after much flagging and other antics whose details I shall spare you, we got one that agreed to take us to the airport. As luck would have it (rather as the CoS would have it), the minute we settled in, the back panel popped loose and the driver started expending all his energy in fixing it up. This rickshaw wasn't going anywhere either.

We extricated ourselves from the interior and started our flagging business again (my arms have quite toned up I observed). I have a notion the CoS was getting bored with this routine so he sent us a rickshaw to get us to the airport and we were finally on our way.
He sent some other distractions for variety instead.

Remember the serpentine rows of honking vehicles stuck in a traffic jam referenced above? Yeah, every line here has a history as you may have noticed by now. So, our rickshaw was stuck somewhere in this serpentine row of honking vehicles in the traffic jam and was contributing in some measure of its own, to the decibel levels by effective and well-paced honking.

I got a wee bit uneasy and decided to call up the airlines to explain my predicament and see if they could let me tele check-in. They politely told me to piss off.

CoS must have been enjoying himself.

I figured there was no need to get upset and worst case I'd miss the flight and end up getting more vacation than I had bargained for. I immediately brightened at that thought and grinned to myself. Now that I was looking at things in the right perspective, I was beginning to positively beam at the traffic, the rain and the local cat. Just when I was about to offer a friendly advice to the driver to turn back and head for home instead, all traffic vanished in a puff of smoke (pun unintended) and we reached the airport in no time flat.

Cursing CoS for spoiling my plans again, I quickly hopped off and rushed to the terminal to catch that blasted flight. I was the last person to arrive before the gates were closed.