MY DAY ... SUCKED

DELHI: a few days ago: FIRST.... I am in a hurry to go to return a video CD which I received in damaged condition... I have to go to Connaught Place via the celebrated Delhi Metro, so Ravi [ a friend] will drop me at Vishwa Vidyalaya station which is about 12 kilometres away from the place I'm camping in... now we have a very tight schedule and the guy is yelling let's get started already... or something like that in the vernacular... now the fellow is in such a tearing hurry that he doesn't notice he's parked his bike JUST next to a pile of GOBAR [a steaming pile of cow shit] ...... where my SHOE had to go to near there to climb up... and I come rushing out of the house and STEPPED right into into the shit... ugh... my beautiful hand-crafted cowboy boot made for me by that great master Lee was covered with cow-turd first thing in the bloody morning and i had to get that cleaned up... which was not so simple considering my shack is on the first floor and the landlady's daughter had just cleaned up the entrance and the stairs nice and shining....

NEXT... at the Metro ticket counter at 9:30 during the rush hour, my stupid wallet [new, by the way, genuine leather from Pakistan bought at the much hyped International Trade fair at Delhi for what i privately consider a rather inflated sum ...but what the hell, with everybody trying to do their bit smoothing out India-Pakistan relations, I suppose I just had to contribute to the general mood, even though I'd probably get a fancier piece at the local tannery ... no pun intended I swear...]... now this bloody wallet gets caught in the back of my pants pocket and i have to spend more than five minutes try to extricate it and in the bargain strike some very embarrassing positions in front of the cute metrosexual chappie whose counter i usually buy tickets from, much to my extreme consternation and the obvious delight of the several smirking members of the Delhi University population !!!

As If that's not enough, when I alight at the Rajiv Chowk station and am going through the automatic gates, some kid has messed up the touch panel just before me, so when I put my coin inside, it gets stuck and sets off alram bells that shrill, trill, clang, scream, ululate, and generally serve to have the bloody Delhi security forces come charging towards me wireless sets at the ready and hands on guns at the hip as though I'm some terrorist... and everyone staring... the metro staff discovered the problem, then escorted me to a special gate which they had to open with a lock.... and there was sheepish me trying to appear non-chalant ...and feeling like the perfect ass.

NOW, the shop.. the Music World outlet near the Plaza Cinema...that i have to visit does not open at 10 am... not at 10:15...not at 10:30... not at 11 am... finally it opens at 11:30 am... and I have to hang around that area for sooo long... that the mobile police wallahs start eyeing me suspiciously and the buxom, barrel- bosomed punjabi grand-mother types start reaching for the chilli powder in their handbags 'cos they're always on the lookout for middle-aged perverts who hang around to leer at their nubile daughters-in-law... anyway... I was sort of saved by the bell, because the shop finally opened and I got my CD exchanged without much fuss.

THEN we have to go towards IGNOU [that's the Indira Gandhi Open University] in located in Saket, so Ravi meets me at Connaught place...and we have a deadline, he's got to have some things fixed up on his examination card and that involves the bureaucracy who are the type that take two hours to complete a 60 minute lunch-break... and we have to travel around 20 kilkometres.. and the time's already 11:45 am and we have to make it to the babu's window before they break for their lunch at 12;30 or thereabouts.... now u just won't believe this.... first he's going okay but doesn't realise that there's a new diversion which he takes by mistake and it sends us back three kilometres... and we're rushing against a deadline...

NEXT we come to a place where the traffic is in an absolute mess because the GREEN light on all sides has got stuck and there's no policeman around .... It was a bloody nightmare at noon....

BUT we manage to make it to the window before munching time and get the papers submitted... and then are told to come back at three o'clock because it's officially the celebrated feeding -the- face hour...and since we're so hungry... we think of going to the IGNOU canteen and all we are able to get is phikka chai [ that's weak tea that looks like dioshwater, tastes like washrags boiled with sugar and has a temperature very muck alike to the Gospel of Saint Luke.... and the patties were as cold as last month's corpse in the local mortuary and tasted like they had been exhumed from the Pyramids... my taste buds reacted so violently that i left the stuff on the table and insisted that we go to Dominoes for some hot chicken Pizza....

and that was the first reasonably decent thing which happend that day...
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