Retribution

So you know how nowadays many weddings offer free on-site mehendi drawing to guests in one of the many the pre-wedding functions. Last year, I spotted one such mehendi artist at my cousin's wedding and promptly went and showed my hand. I got a minimalistic but cute design done across the back of my palm. I was hardly done crowing over its prettiness when a friend promptly managed to smudge it. Giving him a glare which could have melted the Himalayas, I got it corrected by the mehendi artist. Then the clarion call sounded for dinner.

Of course nothing stands between Archana and her food and I was well at the front of the line for the sumptuous buffet spread. I was making my way through getting servings of the yummy dishes, safeguarding my mehendi decorated hand, when a young guy appeared out of nowhere and rudely pushed his way in ahead of me without so much as a muttered 'Excuse me'.

I was startled and annoyed but there was nothing I could do and I proceeded down the line after him. A bit later, when I glanced at my hand to re-admire the mehendi design, I got a shock when I realized that pretty much all of it had been rubbed away. Darn - that rude person had spoilt my mehendi - grrrrr!

I was ready to get all upset and direct my angry gaze upon rude guy when I spotted him and realized that most of the mehendi on my hand had transferred itself to the sleeve of his shirt. Which, till a few minutes earlier, had been a nice milky white.

FOr a moment I was filled with guilt but glee took over almost immediately. Retribution - ha! Since I spread word to my cousins I had plenty of spies to report exactly when rude guy realized that his shirt sleeve now had new designer patterns on it and was also able to note his expression. That would teach you to not cut lines, dude!

It is so true, that old jungle saying: "Never mess with the mehendi on a woman's hands or you will be sorry."

***

Image courtesy here.

Pride comes ...

This afternoon, about an hour after lunch, my eyes were threatening to close on their own. It was time for a coffee break. So I repaired forth to the kitchen. There was no fresh coffee - so I enterprisingly made some.

About the time I finished getting my freshly brewed coffee, my colleague P also came in to get coffee. He was busy mixing coffee, creamer and sugar when he muttered, "Oh darn - I did it again." It turned out that after he had emptied the contents, he had inadvertently dropped the empty packet of Splenda also into his coffee. So there on the top of the coffee in his mug, floated an yellow Splenda cover.

As he fished out the cover with a stirrer, P said, "I just did that this morning and there I go and do it again now." I laughed and then acting all prim and proper said, "That's so careless of you. I am not careless you know. I have never done something like that."

And then walked back to my cubicle. I was feeling very thirsty. As soon as I settled into my chair, staring at something on the monitor, I reached for my almost-full water bottle. Reach it I did - only thing, instead of grasping it, I knocked it over.

The next moment, a pool of water rapidly started spreading across my desk and started dripping down. Onto my chair. And onto my skirt. As I leapt away from my desk, I stared in dismay at some soaked papers and more distressingly, at the huge water stain on my skirt.

Of course, the next half an hour or so saw me glued to my seat till the water could dry off. That also gave me plenty of time to think about why I should not try to act holier than thou when pointing out other people's shortcomings. Sigh :-(!

p.s. I spotted the silver lining soon enough. It could have so easily been the coffee instead of water. Thank God for small mercies!

On time, every time? Right.

So this noon, me and my colleagues decided to leave for lunch at sharp 12.30p as we all had a meeting to attend at 1.30p. S, V and me walked across the street where V bought lunch and S and me nibbled at our homemade fares. Lunch was a merry affair - we were talking about a whole bunch of interesting topics and laughter abounded.

I suddenly remembered the meeting and checked my watch. S and V were watching me and asked "Is it late?". It was only 12.50p. We were mighty surprised that only such a short time had passed by. But we all had been rather hungry - so we had just gobbled up our food real fast. Or so we thought. We decided to dilly-dally a bit before heading back to work. After some more time of dilly-dallying, I checked my watch and went "What!! It's still only 1.00p". V went "No way" and pulled out his cell phone to check the time. It was actually 1:27p - for some reason, my darn watch had been crawling :-(((! We had been having an hour-long lunch. To make things worse we were late for the meeting!

We rushed back to work. Everyone else was already at the meeting. All seats towards the back were taken. And I had to take a seat in the front- right next to my manager. My manager mouthed "Why are you late?" as I slipped into the seat next to him. Boo hoo, I am never late to meetings as a rule.

And you know what the greatest irony of it all is? One of the merry topics discussed during lunch involved S and me crowing about how punctual we always were. Sigh!