Not My Day...

The mobile phone just rang...Just a ring...Its a misscall…The signal to go down and wait near the main road for my colleague…(We go to office daily together…a small adjustment of pooling car…As a daily routine, he would give me a ring when he is just about to reach the main road… and then I will walk my way there and wait for him)…So I rushed out… It was really cold today…and I was freezing …with eager eyes I was tracking each passing vehicle for his car … the endless queue of vehicles…of all shapes and sizes… were just moving one behind another as if they were literally crawling…I hated the traffic…I hated sitting inside the car for endless hours waiting for the traffic to clear up and find ourselves moving…but the more I hated was waiting OUT in the road on a colddddddddddddd morning…without anything to warm me down…and then watch those snakes of vehicles crawling past me…The cold got into my head…I knew it…I was getting irritated…I was losing my temper…

As minutes ticked past, my irritation was rising…I knew, it wasn’t his fault…it was the damn traffic that was making him almost impossible to reach me…he might be just 10 steps from where I was...still it might take the most longest hour to cross even that path…I waited and waited…I was shivering…damn, I am wearing a skirt…I could feel all the pores on my skin standing up as if hearing the national anthem…was embarrassed, imagining IF ANYBODY noticed my almost chicken like stature…I really wanted to scream at my colleague…

Finally, there he is…I knew, I was going to lose it…My face was as if somebody just slapped me…I was angry…angry for no reason…I wanted to just shout at him…Somehow, I did exactly same…as soon as I got into the car FINALLY…I shooted out… “WHY CAN’T U LET ME KNOW IF U R GONNA BE LATE…I WOULD HAVE ATLEAST WAITED INSIDE THE BUILDING…” (I know, he is absolutely not the wrong person…its just that he was on the WRONG SIDE today…)…and then unexpected from him…he blasted back… “I CAN’T FLY…I WAS JUST THERE AND IT TOOK A HELL 20MTS TO REACH HERE..” (he pointed out to the roundabout which was just some 15-20 steps from where I was waiting…)…

I knew I was wrong…and I wasn’t stupid to not understand that HE WAS ALSO NOT IN THE BEST OF HIS MOODS… I guessed… “A fight with his wife..”…still my ego didn’t let me go off…I argued…

Me: Then from tomorrow, I am not going to come out of the house until atleast 10 minutes after the usual time…”

He: No need…Come only after I reach here…I will give u misscall after reaching here…I will wait here

I felt bad…he was hurt…and I hurt him more…but then, even I was having an off mood…

Me: U WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND…WAITING INSIDE THE CAR IN THE COMFORTS OF A HEATER AND STANDING OUT THERE IN THE COLD…

He: I told you…I will give u miss call only after I reach here…Come whenever u want…I will wait…

By now I was trying to calm down…

Me: That’s not needed…Just call me when you reach near that petrol station..I will come down then…

He: NO NEED…I WILL CALL U ONLY ONCE I REACH HERE…

My hyper tension came back...I got irritated again…

Me: OK, DO WHATEVER U WANT...

We completed the rest of the journey in complete SILENCE…

My thoughts:
Why did I get irritated for nothing…? Why should I outpour on him when I myself knew, he was not to be blamed? He was and is a big help for me in my commute to and fro office…and still??? Why is my mood bad today??? What is bugging me??? What am I actually upset about??? Was it because of the cold…was it because he was late…or was it something else…Something that is not clear to me now…Something that is deep down somewhere…Is this some sort of Sixth Sense telling me, that something worse is on the way…God knows…I just knew that something was wrong today and I knew that its not gonna be one of those cool days of my life…I wondered what more was in store for me today…

Just then a Shot of Pain scooted through my brain and I realized...Grr…HE IS BACK…This is absolutely NOT MY DAY…

He was and is one of my worst enemies…He is…

“THE HEADACHE…”

The Answer Paper...

During school days…there were so many silly (atleast for me..) things that I just couldn’t agree to…One such aspect was EXAMS…and more than that the REPORT CARDS…a report card or a mark list was the most horrible thing I wished I never had to take home…especially if the numbers that was in it was not so biggggggg one…We used to have soo many subjects to learn like Mathematics, Science, English, Social Science etc etc…and this Stupid Card had a detailed list of the marks we scored in each subject…and if luck wasn’t with u, then the teachers would get the chance to decorate the Black and White Card with colours…that is, if you fail for one subject, they would draw a red line below that mark…Maybe this was the only place where I liked it Black & White...

My mom was a terror for me and brother during exams and days we get our report cards…I was considered the Intelligent Girl…for the same reason once my brother started the routine life of going to school and having exams and results, mom let me free…means, she didn’t have the time to spare to sit with me to teach me and prepare me for the exams…I HAD to do it myself…I WAS HAPPY….atleast, I was saved from the official thuds and pinches and slaps….(she had this peculiar habit of asking questions once she teach you something and I used to feel that she was POSSESSED by seeing the way she reacted when I couldn’t give the correct answer…) I thanked my brother at heart…bcoz of him I was saved from the pre-exam terror…So if I study well and do the exam well, I would be spared from the Post-exam terror too…I just needed to work hard and get good marks…or rather DECENT marks (and for her that meant above 90%...uhmmmm….)

But somebody else was cursing me then…that was my brother…leaving me on my own meant my mom had her complete time for my brother…so u can imagine the situation….to worsen things up…he was lazy and considered NOT SO STUDIOUS…where mom kept my Decent mark to be 90%, she just hoped my brother to get a 50% ATLEAST…so pre-exam days was the most horrible days for my bro and my mom too…she had to literally bang her own head on the walls trying to teach my bro and making him study them without forgetting them...atleast until he finished his exams…

My mom didn’t leave us free even after the exam…UNTIL, she sees our question papers and make sure that we have done our exams properly…once we reach home after exams, she would sit with the question paper and start asking us the answers…we had to recite the answers we have written…not to forget, she even asked us to write the answers on question paper…so that we didn’t have to recite them…she would read the questions and answers from the question paper and would have a rough idea of how much mark we would score…she didn’t care much about me, as she trusted me to score high…but with my bro, she prayed hard, that he doesn’t fail…. many a times, we had tried many plans to outdo atleast the post-exam terror, by telling, we lost the question paper...nothing ever worked…some how she used to manage to get a spare question paper…God knows how…

That year, I was in the 4th grade and my bro in the 2nd… that is, I was 9 and my bro 7 years old…we came after our Second term exams (exams before the Xmas holidays)…she saw my question paper and I had done the exam pretty well…she was happy…with shivering hands she started going thru my bro’s paper…he had English exam… there was not a single question which she hasn’t taught her… from the first question ‘The vowels of English alphabets are ____’ to the last question ‘Write five lines on - The Cow - ’…my brother was cool in answering every single question…My mom, for the first time in history had a breath of relief…She sighed, “Ha, this time, he wouldn’t fail…and he would be getting good marks too….even if there are spelling mistakes, still he would surely pass…”…for the first time, she was cool and didn’t wait for the results to come…she knew, this time, the result for the English paper is going to be great…

My mom was in for a shock when the results came…my brother had a red line below his English marks…where she expected to see a minimum of 20 out of 50; she saw a 5½. / 50…She was thunderstruck…she knew there was some mistake some where…Maybe the teacher didn’t correct the answer paper correctly…She was angry, bcoz she knew her son had done the exams so well…She rushed to the school, met the teacher and DEMANDED a JUSTIFICATION for the marks…She challenged that there was some terrible mistake…The teacher smiled…She gave mom my brother English Answer Paper…My mom couldn’t believe her eyes…(if you wanna see them urself, pls click on the below images for Page 1 and 2)....

The teacher just had the most easiest answer paper to evaluate...

What happened to my bro after this is History...

GOD BLESS HIM!!!