A comedy of errors Part 1 - Impulsiveness

I’ve never been so impulsive as I have been today. On my way home from work, I decide I need a clothes-stand to dry my clothes, as they refuse to dry inside the room. So I wash some of my clothes and hang them out to dry (inside the room) and move out around 6.30 (after putting my rice to boil) towards Sector 3, Dwarka to buy a clothesline for myself. I decided earlier that I wouldn’t spend more than Rs 500 for a clothes-stand. I go from shop to shop, deciding suddenly that I also needed a bed. Suddenly, I go into this ‘Second hand shop’, where I see beds. The shop-owner tells me that a certain diwan (which looks very nice, btw) costed Rs 3200. I was so blown away by the price that I told him that I just could not afford it. He asked me what my budget was. I told him from Rs 1000 to 1500. (As I had inquired in other shops, a brand new bed without the storage compartment underneath cost Rs 1200). He finally sold the second hand one for Rs 1750! I bought a bed for Rs 1750 without thinking or praying about it. (Of course, I had Rs 2000 still saved after my Winter shopping, and I decided to put those funds to good use!)

As I was reeling from the shock of buying the second most expensive item I have ever owned (next to my laptop) without thinking too much about it, I was bargaining with the cycle-rickshaw guy to take it to my place. We settled for Rs 250 (which was perfect, because it’s an exact Rs 2000)

I sat at the back of a bicycle, while a cycle-rickshaw guy pulled his rickshaw behind us. Before we knew it, we had lost the cycle-rickshaw, who had taken another route! Grr… We pedal back to the shop and ask the shop-keeper who tells us that they left, and scolds my friend (I later find out that his name is Ram* (*well it isn’t, name changed) ) and sends us back again. We go back and forth back and forth, left and right, until he gets tired pedaling. Then I start pedaling taking him doubles, and again looking for him back and forth, back and forth until we call up the shop, who says he hadn’t come back. We again do the above mentioned procedure before finally we call the office and asks for this rickshaw-walla’s number. The rickshaw walla doesn’t pick up his phone.

All this time, I’m wondering if this is a trick played by everybody on me. The shop-owner constantly telling me not to worry, the rickshaw-walla disappearing, while Ram constantly gets angry with the rickshaw-walla. He narrated some story about the rickshaw-walla getting some salary or something with a lot of tears in his eyes. If only I could understood what he said!

He had worked in Bombay, then came to Delhi in hope of a good job but couldn’t make it, and is now hopping from on job to the next. Finally, he gets frustrated, calls up the shop-keeper and goes back to him, leaving me alone with just a bill. I go back home, still wondering if I was being duped or not. I later feel that may be God wanted me to be a witness to this boy Ram, because I was extra-nice to him. Well, with these thoughts in my mind, I walk back to my room all tired and weary, ready for a simple meal and sleep. I come back and see my clothes hanging (still wet) and remember how I went out to by something I needed more than what I actually did! I try to take my mind off these disturbing thoughts with a movie. The movie is funny, and I am thoroughly entertained.

 

To be contd…