I was window shopping at Hyper City this evening for close
to three hours. Oh; in fact I can spend days looking at home decor stuff, stationary
items, books and CDs. The only thing I hate about these shops is the white
sticker with numbers and bar code they place on the things I can’t take my eyes and hands off, which they
fondly call the price tag. It reminds me of the tale of sour grapes :p
When my legs became tired of carrying my weight, I decided to exit the place, promising to return soon to the store, to redo the exercise.
As I walked towards home, I tore opened the wrapper of the
chocolate I bought to pamper me - the little delights I gift myself! I
licked the edges of the chocolate bar to satisfy my dreamy heart which believes
that I am the girl who jumps in joy in the Cadbury TV commercial.
Reality check! I hurt my feet bumping against a fruit
vendor’s trolley and there goes his oranges - rolling on the road one after the
other. Both of us could do nothing but just helplessly look at cars and buses
squeezing them with their wheels to splash the orange juice all over the place!
I was sure that he was going to yell at me in Kannada for
the mess I made. This language in high pitch would definitely give me a head
ache. So before he could open his mouth, I admitted my mistake and promised to
pay for his loss. As usual, I had no money in my wallet; so had to visit the
ATM counter across the road. As a deposit, I gave him the half bitten chocolate and immediately ran towards the money machine as I didn't want to give him any time to react. Through the corner of my eye, I saw him standing by the road like the Statue of Liberty - one hand up in the air which had my chocolate.
I inserted the card in the machine; that is when I
remembered to check my phone to find out the ATM pin. As I was doing all this
patiently, I realized something was stinking. Yuck; it was terrible. As I
turned around to find out the source, I noticed this guy standing right behind me, who
wore a pair of yellow shoes. And, the Sherlock Homes in me spotted dung below his shoes.
“Will you please step out till I finish? Sorry to say this…but the
dung stuck on your shoes is giving such awful smell.” I said this and looked at
his face. He had his helmet on.
“Hey lady…enter your password. Now…right now! Don’t dare
to utter a word” He even had a knife pointed at me that resembled the knife
Sreedevi used in some Hindi movie whose name I don’t remember.
I realized he is the famous ATM villain the newspapers and
TV channels celebrated a few months ago. I felt it is wise to let him loot, so that he will not harm me. After all, nothing is as precious as my God-given
life.
I entered the pin and pressed ‘ENTER’. I could see his eyes
fixed on the screen, one of his hands still had the knife and the other followed the instructions of the machine to find out my balance. And when
the magical figure popped up on the screen, to my surprise, he just collapsed
on the ground.
The doctors who did his post-mortem declared that the reason
for death is sudden unanticipated grief.
Now, this is a warning to all the muggers out there – you
may not die (which is an extreme case) like this fellow. But I am afraid; you
might end up giving your hard earned money to me as my bank balance is indeed a
sad figure! True!!
* * *
Added later – Two of my concerned friends wrote to me to
check if there is any truth in the above story. Darlings…if so, do
you think I will have the time to sit at home and reply to your messages? I
would have been with Arnab Goswami, sitting under his saliva
shower, talking to the nation.
Have a great evening friends!!
PS – However, I was serious when I wrote about my bank balance. I
swear :)