Nov 18, 2007

Scootylicious!

      She started it. I was not hungry at all. She called me up and threatened to do un-printable severing actions with my un-printable assets. I was not intimidated and hinted quite obviously, that she could jump off the Kanchenjunga sans parachute, than try seduce me to come with her for lunch. But she, Chai, the direct descendant of Attila the Dun(ce), came right up to my room, armed with a Swiss army knife and knocked on my door.
      I had just come back from a refreshing bath and was flirting with myself, flexing my muscles standing in front of the mirror when there was this knock on the door. I hurriedly wrapped up myself in a towel and unsuspectingly opened the door. There she was standing, brandishing her puny, sharp knife at me with a murderous glare and poor me, guarding my lineage with a flimsy, cotton towel. I immediately agreed to whatever was that that she wanted without even thinking. There was no need to. It was a foregone conclusion. Like a Farah Khan movie.
      Ten minutes made history, I was roaming the streets of Ahmedabad on my Scooty in search of a restaurant that she told me she knew exactly where it was and had conveniently forgotten. Smoke literally billowed out of my ears as I fumed beneath my pink shirt. The sun bore down on upon us and my temper was slowly losing its bearings. Then disaster struck.

1. Smoking is injurious to health.
2. It leads to partial amnesia.
3. I am eternally broke.

      All these led to my vehicle sputtering and dying in a rather dramatic manner, right at a traffic signal. It stubbornly refused to start. We stood there like fools, kicking away, like a couple of morons trying to demonstrate the art of cycling to mules. After the traffic policeman came to us and ostentatiously requested the 'saar' and his 'missers' to get off the road, we pulled off the road and parked the vehicle right next to a building. Only after a crow pooped on my shirt and I looked up to swear at the crow did I notice.... Holy Hypermetropic Hannibals of Hungary! We had come to the very place, the very restaurant which she had told she knew exactly where it was and had conveniently forgotten! We had found it!
      We did a jig on the pavement, that made the Aborigine death dance look distinctly civilized, and entered the restaurant which she had said she knew exactly where it was but had conveniently forgotten. We sat, we ordered a pukka Tamil Nadu meals replete with more kozhambu, vadai, bisi bela bath, payasam with extra ghee and sunk into the felt. The food came and we ate, chattering about my ingenuity.
      After an hour of constant munching and swallowing sounds that reverberated around the restaurant, two people burped loudly, apparently contented. We were so full that if Kubrick made a movie on us he would have named it, "Full Glutton Jacket". Bad Joke. Anyway, I smiled at Chai. She too smiled back, very satisfied. And then the bill came.

      Nothing happened for ten minutes. We sat staring at the bill, waiting. It did not dawn on us for quite a long time. We kept on waiting. So did the waiter, looking at us despondently, as if there was only one last beedi on earth and his attaining the antique, depended on the tip we were going to give him. Then it hit us. The inevitable had happened. The oft-told tale of misunderstanding and confusion. The one which we dreaded that we would never dread about. There was nothing wrong with the bill.
       I, because of my past financial connections (condition number 3 included), had come to the evident conclusion that she was going to pay and vice versa.
     The situation was desperate. We had to think of something quick. I took out my mobile phone and answered nobody, slyly excusing myself. I walked out of the restaurant nonchalantly, shouting and gesturing loudly in Tamil, into the phone. My phone was literally covered with two liters of spit. I had to do it; for the dramatic effects. The second I was out of the doors, I broke into a run.
      Seconds later, Chai joined me. We ran and ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. We kept on running.

And then we remembered my Scooty.