The Bitten Apple

The blast of air conditioning and murmur of well-behaved crowd of people greeted us as we entered the tiny reception cum waiting room of the service center. A well-modulated and pleasant voice greeted us, “HI! Please take a token and take a seat”. The room was stuffed with people; there were some ten seats which were already occupied. The tiny floor space was crammed with pairs of feet- where do we take a seat? I wondered. Fortunately number forty four was called and two seats fell vacant and we promptly took them without waiting for anyone else! (I justified it as being the only females, we had a right to getting the seat! ).

So far so good! I sighed with relief. I was unconsciously playing with my token when my TT* noticed that it had twenty seven written on it. We had a nice discussion on it about how we will ever be called from forty four to twenty seven! We decided it must be till fifty and then it starts again and we groaned! However poor both our math is we can count! The many numbers before us brought my morale down. We settled down to a long wait……..

My TT was messaging furiously on her I-phone so I decided to take out my non-I-phone in the hallowed sanctum and play on it! I played “Lep’s world” till I died and then decided to indulge in one of my favourite pastimes- observing people and passing sotto voice comments on them. There was a kitty party group of ladies waiting outside talking nineteen to a dozen, One young teenager holding on to a mac, and I pod and a phone (a normal phone thank God!) sitting slouched on a seat looking very depressed and holding token number twenty four. (I was assured then, that they would eventually get to my number!). The usual crowd of apple product owners were there- each vying for attention!

Then walked in Ms. Heroine with streaked hair, tight dress and pencil heels and started talking with one of the attendants in a loud voice. “Can you believe it?” she intoned, “I bought this Mac yesterday, it worked for six hours and then pfft! Shelled out two lakhs for such a cheap product!” I sympathized with her but having been “well brought up” I kept my mouth shut! She was of course asked to wait but she walked out in a huff and came back with her dark glasses on; hung around for some time (None of the chivalrous guys got up to give their seat!) then talked on her phone loudly for some time then walked out again!

I missed her! She had brought some colour and excitement into that “stiff upper lip” kind of environment. Now the only color was the depressed teenager in a pink color co-ordinated outfit. The boys were in their falling-down jeans and crumpled t-shirts and the men in their formal crumpled linen shirts and black pants!

I felt sorry for all the people there. They had bought the apple product thinking that they are paying premium price which would leave them hassle free. Like our elders tell us “money cannot buy happiness” or peace for that matter!

I soon noticed that the number calling had slowed down, it was still at forty six and we had been sitting there for at least one hour! I started paying more attention to the people around and I realized that many on the pretext of collecting their products were jumping the queue. Still I kept quiet…..till I saw this young man walking up to the pretty attendant and getting his problem sorted out. He was unfortunately toying with his token which had twenty eight written on it! Then I forgot all my convent school education and protested! The young lady had to pay attention as the other people looked at her accusingly and she reluctantly asked him to wait. 

Now it was my turn to be glared at by number twenty eight! After this our number was called within ten minutes of my protest (This should teach us that to be a gentleman, never pays in India!). Now a gentleman listened to our minor problem and assured us that we would get a replacement within three days. What were we supposed to do till three days? We asked. An elegant shrug of the shoulder and that was it! We walked back with the hope that the problem would be solved within three days. Sadder and wiser…..

When my TT was ten years I had bought a pair of earrings in the shape of the bitten apple and she had loved it and still wears them even now after six years! I don’t know whether it was a sign but she fell in love with all apple products and has slowly but surely buying them over the years. In fact she has refused new pair of earrings from her aunt because she doesn't want to give them up. She has actually bitten the forbidden apple and cannot give it up!

But yesterday’s experience did what I have not been able to! She is slowly opening her eyes to the fact that Apple products like any other product in the market has its flaws only it is definitely at least thirty percent more expensive!

P.S. To clear one mystery, the tokens began from twenty five and ended at fifty! What the logic behind it is something I haven’t cared to find out…

P.S.2 – The depressed teenagers’ Mac had fallen in water and was a complete wash out and she would have to pay a lakh to get it working!

* Terrible Teenager

Ants go marching by......

“Boom, boom, boom, da dum” they went majestically. All in an orderly line, they marched to the unheard sounds. All the legs walked in tandem, the head was held high and they moved forward fearlessly. The finger of destiny hovered for a second over one head and crushed it ruthlessly. Did the army stop? Did the heads waver? Was there any discordance in the movement of the legs? A big “NO” to all the questions! The fallen soldier was carefully avoided and they marched by with the same discipline as before; as if nothing had happened!

I tried everything! Crushed as many as possible (destiny made me do it, I am not bloodthirsty as a rule!); wiped the whole area (top of my table!) with floor disinfectant (this by a self- confessed OCD patient!); sprayed the space with bug destroyers and as a last resort sprayed it with room fresheners! But they came one after the other, side stepping the dead, and marching on, on their path to progress! Soon they were followed by the hearse bearers who picked up the dead carefully (I counted up to four of them carrying the body carefully to some unknown destination!)

They just poured in and out of my laptop keyboard and drove my paranoia crazy- that my life saving machine would conk off! The room perfume made the room smell wonderful but maybe they did not like it, so they went a little haywire and their discipline was broken. Now instead of a single file there were at least five lines moving in various directions. I know that their composure was broken and it gave me some kind of vicarious satisfaction!

I followed the line to find their place of origin and I found they were coming from the balcony from a place called ‘Nowhere’ and travelling to a place called ‘somewhere’. But due to the massacre that I had indulged in, they were swarming all over my keyboard and peeping from under the ‘B’, ‘H’ and ‘S’ keys. I felt as if they were sending me tongue-in-cheek emoticons from there! Ultimately I won the battle (or so I thought!) they vanished just as they had appeared and I puffed into my keyboard hoping to dislodge the last few survivors, but none came! I was at peace!

The next morning too, the little red ants were nowhere to be seen, though I kept an eagle eye out for them! Just to be on the safe side I sprayed my table with the room freshener and gloated over my find of a new bug destroyer. My ‘Whatsapp’ ring tinkled and I looked at the icon indulgently- one of the kids must have sent me a ‘HI!’ I thought. I tapped on the necessary icon and I was assaulted with a lot of ‘OMG’s   a cry of help from my younger one at school that the red ants were coming out of her laptop! This was followed by lot of ‘puff’ emoticons from other family members!  (Did I tell you that she had gloated over the fact that my outdated laptop had lots of space on the keyboard for the ants to go in and that her latest one would not allow them to?) The wicked Machiavellian had crept into the unsecured ‘latest’ laptop to escape the heat and the smell of my room freshener!

The evening was filled with a lot of complaints- about how the horrendous insects would chew up the hard drive and the PCBs and how her life line would fall to pieces. Having won my own battle I wasn't much too worried about others! But to buy peace I gave many suggestions like using the hair dryer to blow them out; heat it up using the keyboard light; blow on them etc. but my little one was suspicious of my advice and she went to the final frontier of getting good counsel – Google! She asked me whether I had a vacuum cleaner (I don’t!) and gave me a disgusted look at my reply but she realized that many people all over the world had been so attacked and had survived and this made her calm down. She fretted and followed all my advice and took it out from the ant infested room for the night.

I haven’t as yet got any SOS messages from that department. I hope the ants have abandoned their sanctuary and found another. I am guilty of homicide and genocide and other horrible crimes but my conscience isn't troubling me too much! As I am writing I saw one little head peeping from under ‘w’ but I smiled indulgently and crushed it to death for having  bitten my little one  on her legs!

April

Google made a fool of me yesterday! I clicked on the smell tab and proceeded to try and smell many smells. (Thinking it’s some great technological advance!) I tried and tried; put my nose as close to the screen as I could but though my heart said “I can smell the rose” my cynical mind refused to accept my memory as the truth and refused to believe in Google!  When my teen came home and made me do it again – just to humor her I said I could smell the beach but when she went on to make me smell the rose I couldn't lie and said I couldn't  Only then did she tell me that it was an April fool joke!

In school, April first, was a fun day and most of us at one time or the other has indulged in them! It was fun when we started it and irritating when we had to bear the brunt of it! I remember a classmate whose birthday fell on first April. He had to listen to the clichéd jokes year after year….

There are many theories behind the April fool day’s origin but what seems most sensible to me is Boese’s belief- that April Fools' Day simply grew out of age-old European spring festivals of renewal, in which pranks and camouflaging one's identity are common.

April, all over the western world is seen as a new beginning, it normally ushers in Easter which is a festival of renewal. It brings in the warmth after a long winter and a short spring; it makes the flowers bloom; it brings out the fertility rites in the open- generally it is the month of rejoicing. Yet we have an ironic Eliot saying “April is the cruelest month”; as against Chaucer’s “When April with his showers so sweet….” Both poets have their own reasons for their statements but while Chaucer follows the prototype, we have Eliot going against the grain! If we were to go deep inside both the poems we would realize that both have a different viewpoint than what they are stating. Is that what April is all about?

Confusing us with warmth and sudden cold showers; sometimes snow and sometimes extreme heat, April, in India, is a busy month; it is a harbinger of the extreme heat and discomfort of summer; school children are restless, waiting for it to get over and then the long summer break; families are planning their holidays to cooler climes; the sense of renewal is replaced by a kind of suffocation from which we need to escape.

Think colour and you think of April. All the flowers bloom during this month. Green saplings and shoots are the symbols of spring but full bloomed blossoms, colourful and vibrant are the hues of April. The tangy strawberries leave and augur in the delicious smell of mangoes. The traffic light fruit sellers are the key to my season recognition! From December to mid-march I had been buying strawberries from them. They always start with sixty rupees for the box and end up giving me four boxes for hundred! I am sure they recognize me and play the same game every time. I have never given them more or less than hundred for the four boxes! I have yet to buy mangoes from them, but I shall plan out my bargain strategy after I see what the price of these nectarines is in the super markets!

I can see a lot of water tankers trundling along the dusty roads; so it is the time for water shortage; the maid complains of the long lines for getting drinking water; the small earthen pots with steel glasses are put up on each corner of the road by some good Samaritan. Some people leave bowls of water for the crows, sparrow and doves! The other day a hawk displaced all the birds to drink gulps after gulps of water. The sun is intense, bright and hot. The breeze though is still cool and walking under the shady trees is still a pleasure. I suppose April is blowing hot and blowing cold all the time. It is bipolar!

 Getting slightly baked in my own little glass house I see, hear and feel the joy of people who are  in places of rain and snow and the pain of people who are getting roasted in Hades like environment! I thank my stars that I am neither freezing nor roasting. This does not mean that I am not envious of the people of the rain kingdom or the snow Raj! I am jealous of all the people who have the ‘time and money’ to go for exotic cruises and maybe explore the moon; I envy all those who are ‘rich’ enough to have their own yachts and “me time”; I go green when I see mountaineers and hitch hikers for I know I will never indulge in these pursuits this life time!

When I enter April, my heart beats a wee bit faster; my breath fills in a tad bit swifter and my thoughts rise high into the unknown. It is as if I am behind the bend and something exciting is waiting for me! I am like a little child when it comes to my birth month. I am old and ‘wise’ now yet the excitement has never diminished. I keep threatening I want to die as soon as my responsibilities are over but I wonder if that is true. As the years pass I empathize with the will of living of dying patients. Is it the fear of death or the exhilaration of living that pushes this desire?

Is there anyone there who does not anticipate his birthday as a symbol of renewal and rejuvenation?