!@#$%!!

There are horrible things, and there are shitty things. Horrible ones make you cringe or cry when u remember them, shitty things are frustrating, but only make you shrug at the memory, and make others laugh cruelly when narrated.

For eg, when you unknowingly step into dung on the road, it’s a shitty thing.. but when you slip in it and break your nose and are left disfigured forever, it’s horrible.

I travel in local trains to go to work, and the other day, I left office early, and there was a train leaving at 4.30 pm. It was 4.29 in my watch. I rushed to the ticket counter, and I saw the train pull into the platform. I pushed everyone in the queue aside, yelled at the aunty to gimme a ticket and threw a Rs10 note at her. And this dumb female, starts counting coins to pay me back without handing over the ticket. I yell again, snatch the ticket and rush out. The train has started moving, and I started running towards the entrance of a compartment, movie style. I almost got into it, with one foot on the foot-hold, when I slipped. I would’ve gone crashing down onto the platform, and got injured, died whatever..

If he hadn’t pulled me inside. Well, I’m no Simran, so he wasn’t Shah Rukh either. More like Amrish Puri, judging by the length of the lecture he gave me. “you know what could have happened? You know how irresponsible it was?” so on and so forth. Interestingly, every thing he said was a question. “How would your parents feel?”.. “blah blah? Bblah?” it was quite funny after I’d noticed this. I counted 14 questions before he shut up and looked away. He had a shiny bald patch on his head. So, let’s call him Anupam Kher? But he had the strength to pull me, (ME!) into the train, so more like Dara Singh.. Well whoever.

I pulled out my book and began reading, and looked out when the train approached a station. My mouth fell open. This train wasn’t supposed to go to this station!! Turns out I was on the wrong train! This explained why the ticket counter lady was so nonchalant when I told her that the train had arrived. Turns out she wasn’t the dumb one after all. I was so frustu that some really nasty words flew out of my mouth, causing our Amrish Puri to stare at me with a horrified look. “I bet you wont ask me any ‘questions’ now” I thought.

That same evening.

I was going to my aunt’s place and my cousin had come to pick me up on her 2-wheeler. On the way a drain was overflowing, and I was telling her to drive very very slowly. “I don’t want even a drop of the dirty drain water to splash on to my foot. Slow down”.. “slower”..” Slowerrrrrrr” at that precise moment.. ‘Splash!!’ a goddamned truck driver went speeding past us. Again a string of expletives flew out of my mouth, much to the shock of my little cousin, who had never seen this side of ‘Manasa-akka’.

But it’s useless to bad-mouth anyone. It’s no one’s fault, and there’s no way to escape it. When there’s shit waiting to happen, it will.