Shawsh'ankle' Redemption

Only this time I wasn’t faking it. About 11 years back when I was in eight standard, or somewhere there, I was asked by my teacher to play a part in a play. I though that I hadn’t done any great things so far so WTH (H=Heck not Hell. I love God) I’ll do it. Rehearsal began and as it turned out I wasn’t suited to play a Doctor. I’ am sorry, as I 14 years old, it’s odd that I do not know how to hold a stethoscope.  So after 2 days of practice I was downgraded from a Doctor to a guy running a grocery store!

That’s like going from being in Mathematics section till 10^th and then being told to switch to commerce for 12^th! My soul threw up. I thought of showing my teacher how good a doctor I was by breaking her Femur! but I did not and my report card vouches for it. I decided to ditch the play and I needed a plan to get out of it.

I used to ride a bike to school and I decided to center my script on it. So here’s how it would go. I go out on a ride, stumble across a rough patch on the road and take a hard fall, sprain my leg and end up with a bandaged leg for at least a week and I’ am out of the play. Not in real. I may not be qualified to play a doctor but 'Am not stupid. But I couldn’t walk to school with a normal gait and then wrap a bandage on my leg in front of the school gate so I had to involve my Mom/Dad in this too. This was tricky. I would me limping 24 hrs! So my cycle crash occurred at an audible distance from home and I made my debut at acting the ‘painful’ look and bailed out from the play. And that’s the story of how I had my shot at stardom and how I blew it by inventing a lie of falling off a bike when all I did was dismount, sit down, well up and shout!

11 years later on Thanksgiving Day, I’ am walking to a friends place for a dinner. No buses are running on campus so Ashu and I walk the way. ‘Boy the campus is so crowded today because of the A&M game and look at all the.. aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh’ and I flipped over, my specs fogged and flew out and I was lying flat on the grass. Apparently I had stepped into a hole, a size of a bear trap and twisted my ankle as badly as a toffee wrapper . I was in a total holiday mood and in no way was I gonna let this minor, aaaaaaaaahhhhhh, incident put a damper on my plans. So with Ashu’s help I trotted a mile across campus walking as if Pinocchio was suffering from a severe case of Termite attack! With every step, the crunch and internal aaah alarm went off. I managed to get there but with dinner the plans for the night were not over yet. It was Black-Friday and I could not allow by ankle to come in the way of the awesome threesome between my credit card, 50% sale and my shopping fetish!  It was the first time in my life that I did a night out and for what an honorable cause. Wardrobe re-style!

All this while I was walking like the hands of clock at 17:30.

So here are the 3 morals of the story

1. Never fake an accident because it come back to haunt you in real 11 years later.
   
2. Tylenol doesn’t make pain go away. ‘Did you find everything ok? Your bill is XXXXX, please swipe your card’ does.
   
3. England you suck at cricket. India you rock! ( It has nothing to do with the story but I just wanted to say it )

    

    
   

The Night the crowd came out

To my friends – Ashu, Miguel, Angel, Cagri, Andres, Gilberto, Karina and Federico 

It was as wild as Bugs Bunny on an aphrodisiac. On a fornicating spree. Only it wasn’t Bugs Bunny, it was the UT Students. It wasn’t aphrodisiac, it was sheer madness and ‘spirit’ and it wasn’t a fornicating spree. It was Halloween!

I had heard the stories of the crowd going berserk on the 6^th Street but I was about to discover it first hand today. You know when I go grocery shopping and I buy too many vegetables that exceed the size of the crisper, I stuff it in somehow, squishing the tomatoes, twisting the gourd and pulping the lemons. I totally empathize with them after this night. I open my fridge and the tomato looks up and says “Aha! Been there, seen it! Do you get it now how it feels to be groped my fellow species!”

My non-Indian friends had celebrated Diwali with me so I decided to go for Halloween with full steam. I was dressed as a County Cop with a badge, goggles, shoes and everything. Just my Allen Solly belt was a dead-giveaway! Now I couldn’t wear my regular glasses so I put it in a friend’s purse and I was walking with my prescription shades on which made the dark night ever darker and me half-blind. But then, in the crowd bumping was unavoidable anyways. After all it beat the Mumbai Local Trains hands down.

I must admit that Americans can be creative in the weirdest ways possible and they do put in a lot of effort to make that creativity come alive. Some of the funniest, spookiest, LMAO and gross costumes I saw –

5 guys dressed as blocks of Tetris who managed to carry 5 ft high blocks and sat interlocked on the street. So many Sarah Palins that if indeed they were republicans then McCain need not worry. A guy dressed as an Investment Banker with his wife in front of him and a board on his head “On Sale For 1000$. Sell everything. The market is crashing!!“. The famous Batman and Joker duo at times seen with the entire crew of Justice League. So many girls dressed to the point of endorsing ‘sluts are us’. Fred Flintstones and Welma, entire cast of Loony Tunes, guys dressed as playmates, incredible hulk and there were some other cops too beside me. At one point I even crossed some real cops who were patrolling the area. Whoopsy Daisies ! I asked one of them for a picture and he said ‘sure’. Also the grossest of costumes (but I did laugh my heart out) was this Guy dressed as a huge dick down the minutest details. Who makes that stuff !! “Oh yes Sir. Please stitch me a weeny. Yeah 6 foot long. That’s right. Don’t forget the pockets!” If that’s isn’t creativity then Osama is really dead.

And in all this hustle I lost sight of my friend who had my glasses and I was stuck with my shades with which I was seeing white as grey and without which black. We went into a pub and the doorman asked me to take off my glasses inside to avoid stepping on someone’s toes. “Buddy without it I’ll walk OVER someone and not know”. Eased my feet after miles and hours of walking and it was 02:00 soon. Took the bus back to campus, which was now looking like how it would look when civilization is wiped out. Totally deserted. My flatmate Ashu, was guiding me along. “Here, step up to the sidewalk. Lookout, there’s a pole. Dogshit! Oops! “  I reached home unscathed.

This was my first taste of American Festivity and I can’t say that I did not love it. It was wild and lively and I slept a drunk, jay-walking, unruly cop tonite.