When nature conspires against you and each of its elements heartlessly turn their backs at you, what do you turn to? The blogosphere of ce! The pleasure of knowing that a few folks out there are actually reading this (ignoring the obvious fact that no one cares and that they prably crib for having wasted their precious time on someone’s miserable rants). Of course, the same very fact impels one to charily edit out certain (read: most) parts of the post. Anyways, making suitable compromises, I proceed…

I ask a friend out to dinner, it being his last dinner with me, I get unusually benevolent; let him lead every conversation (I being the snap-back-right-at-your-face kind, uncalled for, or otherwise, without the slightest shred of hesitation, it quite understandably required an enormous effort at my end). I let him place the order, again without forcing my preferences on him (a Herculean achievement, mind you). I stick my brains out to ensure an amicable banter, and guess what I am awarded with? Snide and absolutely callous comments on how my bank balance can never deplete being the covetous miser I am, how absolutely dross I happen to be, and how I would need a chaperon to get to the next block in one piece. Fighting the urge to rough him up and permanently deform his anyways equine visage, I put up an air of nonchalance, hoping desperately that the ache doesn’t show on the surface. I agree that this image of mine is my own creation, simply because I enjoy pulling out my weaknesses and blowing them out of proportions. It passes for a glib conversation without risking one’s creed of not biting behind others’ backs. But that doesn’t give someone else the license to blatantly cross all limits of societal etiquettes and be crass with the person who is presently being billed (out of choice, to underline my point) for the cornucopia of things that is being ingested by him.
With a muttered oath of sticking to my little coterie of friends henceforth, when all I hope for is a pleasurable evening, I forgive the man, but as it seems, I haven’t quite been able to forget the episode. After having worded the twisted, toxic sensation, I hope to achieve the same.

Cut to scene two:
To make a long story short, I lose my phone, out of my own carelessness I tell myself. My guilt makes me want to renounce the handy facility until I learn to exercise caution while traveling, but my family mocks at my deplorably episodic conscience, and gets me a new ( thankfully cheaper) phone. Now, this is a very uncomfortable situation, you must agree. When you truly repent something and no one gives it a damn. I’d say it’s fatal to your self-esteem. As for me, I feel thoroughly mortified! But the delay at the service provider’s end more than makes up for the promptness at my unduly generous and forgiving mother’s end. The lady at the counter on the other hand makes full use of her technical vocabulary of ‘server’, ‘backend’, and ‘glitch’ and I am pitilessly exposed to 72 different sentences embedded with these words within 72 hours of purchase. Yet all I hear when I dial a number is “to resume service, please contact customer service”. Yes, I will, but could you please tell me who this “customer service” is? The *333 definitely isn’t. After half an hour of restless waiting, what I get is as follows:

Me: hi, my number is blab la bla…
*333: blab la what?
Me: blab la blab la (at a snails pace)
*333: I repeat, blab la (and a wrong) bla
Me: no, no, blab la (zzzz, so slow that I almost doze off)
(At the fifth attempt she finally gets the number, bless her!)
Me: (thrilled at finally making a progress, I proceed, tentatively)
I have misplaced my phone and …..(I get her up to date)
*333: ya, first of all madam, I am sorry to hear that you have lost your phone…
Me: (cutting her short, imagine this after a 30 min wait and a fifteen min exercise to get your number across!) yeah, that’s ok, but could you please….(I repeat my point, yet again)
*333: please hold on ( and after what seemed like an eon,) madam, I am sorry to say, everything has been done at the back end, you have to visit the web world. Nothing is possible at our end.
Me: how many ends does your system have? I have tried two as of now.
(At this my mother who happened to be around gives me a menacing look and I am forced to hang up with a quick half hearted apology)

But I must confess, I feel a strange freedom. I have begun to like the present situation. I have quit bothering myself with enquiring what people are up to, worrying if I didn’t receive a reply and having worthless conversations with people I am not sure if they really care. I indeed needed this hiatus in my social life. I might just want to continue this way.

So, to all those who have tried to get in touch with me lately, Hello. :)