If Rodin were to seek a model for a piece entitled The Jinx, I would be the perfect choice. Da Vinci would have wept for joy to have found the perfect Mona Bad Lucka. As for Uncle Podger, I bet he can’t hold a candle to me.
Talk of unfortunate circumstances or untoward accidents, I seem to be persistently dogged by strange coincidences at every quarter possible. I have become so resilient to such odd circumstances, so prepared to face any kind of unexpected calamity, that nothing takes me by surprise anymore. In fact, if everything turns out the way it is supposed to, I get an uncanny feeling right in the gut.
Take the case of the tailor who met with a road accident just the day before my daughter’s wedding blouse was due. Everybody was flabbergasted. Not me. I calmly jumped across the counter, pulled out the half -finished blouse from a confused stack and much to the surprise of the staff, walked away triumphantly, after settling the bill. That I had to find an interim tailor to stitch the other sleeve, in about three hours flat, is another story altogether.
The scenario was no different when I decided to send a parcel to my sister the other day. Earlier ventures had proved only mildly disastrous. The first time, having sent two parcels to the United Kingdom without much ado, I was just settling into my afternoon siesta when a desperate postal official sent an SOS saying he had wrongly billed me. Please could I send the extra 100 rupees through the bearer of the letter, as otherwise he would be penalised.
Another challenge
Anyone else would have thought twice before sending another parcel. The stoic in me spurred me on to take up another postal challenge. Armed with designer blouses, hand-made murukku , and Shah Rukh Khan’s biography for my niece and nephew, I set out bravely to face a perilous trial. Of course, the expert parcel-wrapper had gone out to lunch to a nearby “ottal” (as opposed to the packed lunch he used to bring every single day of his postal career). I smiled wisely while others in the line (first-time jinxes, I suppose) swore, murmured, stomped, screamed and sweated.
And as I watched the rest of the staff suck the sap out of drumsticks, I salivated, tried to quell my gastric juices and even dug into the hand-made murukku .
One hour later our hero made his appearance, gave me one smirk and said did you not know that the standard cardboard boxes were out of supply (unless I was sending 20 kg of course) and you have to get your own box from somewhere. The other street-smart alecs had packed everything neatly into cardboard containers, home-grown, I think.
I must say every time I face rejection a new surge of energy envelops me. I walked out of the rear entrance, looked to the right, then to the left and then again to the right (I don’t know why), and saw an expressionless man staring at me. Without as much as moving a limb, he directed his eyes to the left and I followed his minimalist instructions religiously. Apparently, the helmet-shop next door was doing more business selling card board boxes (to naive parcel-senders) than it did in wooing helmet-wearers. I wonder if the expression-less man had a cut in the whole business.
Having selected the right size from the variety on display for a price of Rs. 5, I directed other lost souls (with my eyes only) to the helmet store and trudged back, only to realise that the billing clerk had gone out to lunch. Luckily, his wife had not packed drumsticks in his tiffin, as a result of which he made a fairly quick post-lunch billing appearance. After discussing sundry details with his boss (in hushed whispers, making us wonder if the information was classified) the hero of parcel-wrapping came back to his counter, gave one cursory glance at my prize catch and said it couldn’t compare with any of the regular post office cardboard boxes and that there was no guarantee the parcel would reach in one piece in such a flimsy container.
Bravely, I watched him pack the contents with a flourish and an exaggerated air of expertise, before he threw it in along with the other helmet boxes.
When my sister finally received the parcel and thanked me for the trouble, I smiled wryly and said no problem, the pleasure is mine. After all Madame Tussauds was just round the corner.
sreelatharadhakrishnan53
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