A Not So Average Day

So here I am stuck in the elevator alone. Sweet! It all started this morning when I did not wake up with the alarm. Don’t get me wrong I’m not a slacker or a lazy bum, at least not when it is time to get up for THE job interview of my life. But today for some reason I did not wake up with the first tinkle of the alarm clock, nor did its incessant ringing break me out of my dream. Oh! Yes of course the dream. How can I forget the dream? I am a self confessed dreamer. I live more in my dream world than in reality. Not a particularly good thing to be doing, considering that I’m more often than not quite rudely pulled out of my state of parallel existence, usually to find myself either on my rear on the floor(or road!) or in a situation where all eyes are on me waiting for me to speak and I’m a million miles away. Embarrassing. Extremely embarrassing. Sort of like the time in a movie hall when you anticipate a loud moment in the movie and decide to speak loudly to make yourself heard and the movie decides to silence out. Of course then not only the people sitting with you hear you, but the entire auditorium has an insight to your opinion!! That is my life. So like I was saying I did not wake up with the alarm. Instead my brain broke out of sleep one and a half hour after the time I was due to wake up. Sheesh… so me, a person who is obsessively methodological, slow and organized ended up rushing through my morning routine (I must admit here that I hate rushing through anything) got dressed, locked up and called for the elevator (my house is on the seventh floor). Of course of all the times for the lift to be jammed on the ground floor it had to be today, when I was in a hurry that it actually was jammed. Cursing a blue streak, I ran down the stairs, only to reach the complex entrance and find no auto rickshaws there. (My father refuses to trust me with anything that moves and that needs to be operated on the street as conveyance. I am 22 yrs old in case you’re wondering.) So I ended up walking nearly a kilometer before I came by a rickshaw. By now I was good 45 minutes late. I called my future employer and made some very random excuses. (I don’t think she quite believed me, but by now I did not care, I just wanted to reach the office before lunch hour!) Well just when I thought things were getting along just fine, something had to happen. What I still fail to understand is why the hell did I not see it coming and anticipate it? I mean Murphy’s most basic Law was written with me in mind. The rickshaw broke down. It just stopped, along with my heartbeat. “Sorry Madam gas over.” Said the poor hapless driver. I did not blame him, though I did indulge in a slanging match with him. It was just not my day. These things pick the damnedest time to happen. Why today? Why when I need to make an impression? (all chances of which had been shot to hell by now, by the way) anyway, I managed to get a grip on my anger, (with A LOT of difficulty might I admit, deep breaths counting till ten… no make that a hundred et all) and got out of the useless rickshaw (all the while cursing my dad for his lack in faith in me, though I have to admit, it might not have made much of a difference, considering the current state of affairs and the way things were going. The car would probably have given up on me, the kinetic would probably have run out of gas as well, and the bicycle… well… it would probably have crash landed against the divider, with me still on it, mind you.) Now here is the tough part, the stupid vehicle had run out of gas in an area of the city where there wasn’t another rickshaw in sight for miles. So I walked. It’s what I invariably end up doing in situations like this. This should give you an insight into my sorry state of affairs (on GOOD days, when I did not have interviews to attend). Eventually I did get another rickshaw, after miles of walking, it did seem like miles. Oh! And did I mention, it was raining? My brand new salwar kameez was now limp and hanging on my persona, and to top it all off, dripping color. Dripping color, I tell you. When one spends nearly a fortune on clothes like these the least one expects is that the color wouldn’t run. But what can I say? I repeat, it was just one of those days. I did finally reach the office, a full two hours late. The irony of it all was that, owing to the rains they had called off the interview, because most of the candidate had failed to turn up!! Just my luck! Sigh… now to trudge back home. I walked in the rain, in for a dime in for a dollar. Only by this time my luck seemed to have improved, a friend of mine working for the same company was in possession of a car and offered to drop me back. It was a run down beat up old thing, so I guess my being wet and dripping color did not make much difference. I did look at the vehicle a little skeptically. Will it break down mid way? It did not. We reached my apartment complex, I thanked my friend, got out of the car and made a dash for the building (frankly I had out run my endurance to water). I decided not to risk the elevator in case it got stuck somewhere and did not reach the ground floor. I climbed stairs. Yes I climbed seven stories up. I reached my floor huffing and puffing and completely out of breath. It was not funny. And it was then that I realized that I had left my mobile phone and wallet in my friend’s car. Of all the moronic things to do. To hell with it, I thought. I’ll take it later. Luckily for me, the elevator stopped at my floor just then, with my poor friend in it.

To be continued......