the key to all happiness

it was a very normal day... i got up at the usual 7am (yes that has become usual now...) and caught the bus to work... stayed there from 9am to 615pm during which i did everything possible - wondering why gtalk was not working only for me, trying to understand whether the user manual was stupid or trivial, drank tea, ate a heavy breakfast and an even heavier lunch, refreshed my mail folder a hundred and fifty times etc, not necessarily in that chronological order...

so in a very normal way i reached my drop point feeling all tired after a hard day at work choosing to ignore the make-you-fly-for-sometime kinda bumpy speed breakers on the way back... while walking back that 200 meters to my abode, i slipped my hand into my pocket and frantically searched that 4inch deep cloth bag in disbelief... my key was missing... the only key to the only lock on my only door was missing... the key to my hopes of catching a short nap before dinner was gone... i did vaguely remember a distinctly rattling thud as if something had fallen out of someone's pocket after a particularly nasty bump, but i was preoccupied with my plans for the snooze that i chose to ignore that... now i could not forgive myself for that fleeting moment of weakness...

well, anyways the MBA in me did not let me brood over the spilt milk or in this case the dropped key for too long, and i promptly called up my landlord and told him of my predicament... but then my great overlord Murphy decided to have some fun...

the call got disconnected due to his inability to hear me properly over the traffic he was driving through... but i thought he said something like he would check if the key had a duplicate and would call me in about 15 minutes... so in order to kill time i decided to call up some long overdue friends... the first number was switched off... the second was no longer in use... the third was busy... i got tired... looking around for someone to kill... oops, someone to help me kill time...

there was this poor neighbor who had bunked office as he was unwell... we had a long chat where we exchanged each other's bio-data... then again murphy wanted me isolated perhaps and this guy got a call from his long lost sweetheart to whom he started explaining what insurance was and how he sold it to poor unsuspecting people... anyways i looked at my watch and my cell phone's call register and calculated that there was still some 10 minutes pending for my owner to call back in his promised 20minutes... so i decided to try my luck again with other friends and i dialed... one of them did pick up the call and said he was on his way to a conference call with his clients in the USA... curse the indian economy that is so dependent on the USA that it does not even allow a guy in distress to call his friend...

so then i tried another and then another and then another and managed to squeeze some five five minutes of their time... that is when you realize that everyone is busy either going home or some other work related work... when you have your key the world goes home with you, but when you lose the key, you lose it alone... so i have managed to excruciatingly complete some 15 minutes of my existence... and i decide that my landlord's grace period is over and i dial his number... that is when i get the rudest shock - "the number you are trying to reach is not reachable"... even after 15 trials that guy is still in some unreachable location... was he unreachable by chance or was that his ploy and had gone into hiding hoping that i wud leave my stuff inside the room and return to my hometown so that he can rent it out to somebody else...

i then try the other number, a relative of my landlord, but that is another recorded beep this time - not even the mechanical monotonous voice... the number is busy... finally after frantically alternating between the unreachable landlord and the busy landlord's relative, i finally manage to get through to the relative... who is at an undisclosed location more secret than Area51 some many many miles away and it was impossible for him to come over... and he promises me that he would get in touch with my landlord... but before i could warn him that he was untouchable, the phone was hung up...

that was the last straw... i prepare myself for the worst situation... i anyway live on the terrace, so i can sleep there in the open air... in the early morning it would get a bit cold, so maybe i can wake up and exercise... only it would be a bit uncomfortable but that is alright... i would have to take the next day off and maybe around 10am go hunting for a lock breaker... as in a key maker... i would get him to come to the house and make him make a duplicate, i would pay him some 200 bucks... my friend spent 250 on a similar occasion but i will bargain... shit this 200 bucks is causing a dent in my budget... and i will have to eat at less expensive places... and worse i may not be able to save enough to buy a new bike if i keep repeating this... oh if i cannot even buy a bike i cannot even think of buying a nice apartment on the 4th floor on the outer ring road... the real estate prices are soaring... oh man !!!

while i was just bordering on the edge of hysteria, i see a dark bulky figure moving up the stairs... when the face became visible in the moonlight i let out the biggest phew that i have in my whole life... it was the landlord... my SAVIOR !!! but the suspense was still not broken, and i half expected the door would be... but luckily murphy decided to focus elsewhere and we did manage to find the duplicate...

maybe that dream house on outer ring road is not just a castle in the air... maybe there is some hope yet... and I will make a few extra duplicates of the keys, just in case…