The key to all happiness – part 2

This is not a sequel(like jurassic part or harry potter) and has almost nothing in common to the previous post except for the damn !^(#!%@ key…

It was a normal day, bright blue and cloudless skies, cool sunny day. Work was the normal non-existential affair and I had a breeze of a day. In the evening some of us had agreed to meet up for dinner at a chettinad restaurant – one of my favorite cuisines. So there was excitement in the air in anticipation of the good food that lay ahead of me later in the day.

And hence I decided to leave a little earlier than usual, caught the bus that was home bound and reached home a nominal travel time later. But since the winter was setting in, it had grown dark already. That was where I should have donned my paranoid hat and looked occasionally at the skies, but I didn’t. If I had I would have noticed the stealthy accumulation of rain clouds that had added to the drop in temperature and a nice cool breeze that was blowing was actually the result of a local shower at some other area in the city.

I briskly walked home from my bus stop with a spring in my step and a song on my lips (it is good when you cant hear what you are singing – the loud clear sound of the ipod takes care of it) and bounded up the stairs and opened the main hall door. I put my hand into my pocket for my room key and voila – it was not there.

I did not have to think too much – I knew exactly where it was – in my drawer in the office. And I also knew where my office was – some 20kms away. The song in my lips changed into a loud groan that even my ipod could not eclipse.

But I was an mba, so I was getting into the solver mode even as the groan was dying out. I had 3 choices in front of me

plan A - go back to the office and get my key

plan B - stay with my dinner mate

plan C - wait for my roommate

The first one was the most uninviting. Come on said my brain – you just traveled 20 !^(#!%@ kilometers and you want to do it again? Twice ? no way !!! and I can’t feel un-guilty looking at the smiling faces of the late leavers in my team (I left early remember).

So lets move on to plan B. Only problem, I will have to sleep in my formals. Pretty uncomfortable. I want my comfort sleep. And I will have to wake up early to get back to my room for my fresh clothes. I want to sleep those 10mins I will spend traveling from my friend’s place to my room. I can’t sacrifice that.

So plan C. Wait for my roommate. But then that would mean that I would be in the cold till he got back… which would be around 2am… that is if at all he decided to come home… which is a difficult situation altogether.

Wait!!! that exhausted all my plans. I don’t have any more plans. Of course I cant break the lock etc because that would mean breaking the door itself. This plan was dropped even before I had the three choices.

That was when a savior came in. Well not actually a very enthusiastic savior, but more of the reluctant Rambo types(Well at that moment I would call anyone a Stallone if they could help). And there was this guy who could but didn’t want to and all he wanted was to help build that Buddhist temple in Cambodia. Ok ok, not Cambodia. Ok… ok... no temple either. This bugger had just driven back on his bike from his office and was not interested in being a driver to a desperate madman. And I was in no mood to take a no for an answer. At the end of some 15 minutes of haggling he decided to humor me. For what? Yeah I forgot. By some weird twist of fate, I had my roommate’s phone number. I called him and decided to make that great trip to his office to collect the key. So what if his office was 10kms away. It was at least only half the distance to mine. Well, this rambo was not very impressed with this argument, but thankfully he moved.

But all was not well that ended well. We were just approaching the 2kms mark on the trip-meter and there was a splat on my face… ummm... the optimistic me thought it was some stray water vapor that I managed to pass through. But it was not to be and obviously my negative self was proudly surfacing that it had been right all the time – it was raining (remember the seemingly unnecessary mentioning of local showers somewhere up there). But we kept at it. Hardly had we moved some 500mts when the little big drops got bigger and became big big drops. And they were coming down faster.

Of course, I hate rains. So there was a frantic turnaround and back to the place of accommodation. And then I made that decision to revert back to plan C. Or was it plan B? Ok. Whatever alphabet it was, it was basically to wait – to wait for him to come back. And btw, the rain had stopped (%#%@$$#%#^%&@#).

But then, I had to have my dinner as well. So putting all my trust in my angelic roommate (who by another weird twist of fate was planning to come home earlier) and in the unknown god (who was enjoying all this on his sim-city console), I decided to go on to dinner. And my what a dinner that was, but then this is not the time for that description. Maybe some other time.

And when I came home, my roommate had already come back and the door was open for me. So that was it, all was well that ended well and I got to sleep in my pyjamas.

The end.

PS. Thanks srk, for finally unclogging my pipeline with your Murphy post.

PPS. I must stop this PS-ing. It is getting too regular. Somebody once said they directly jumped to my postscripts in my mails – that saved them a lot time. Any suggestions?