Falling Prey to Murphy’s Law

A day in my life:

7AM: Asleep what else

The bell rang and Tina went to open the door. She gave me the rather unpleasant news that our house maid had given us there are of honor of coming for work a good one hour ahead of her normal time. This meant that I could not sleep for one more hour as she might feel uncomfortable to clean our room, while I was sleeping. I really hate it when someone deprives me of my fundamental right to sleep for as long as I want.

8:30 AM: Getting ready for work

When I went in to the washroom to take a bath, the water ran out on me. I could have approached the watchman to turn on the water, but decided against it. Two reasons, firstly the language barrier, and secondly, I was convinced that even if I did spend 10-15 minutes using sign-language to communicate, he wouldn’t have done anything because he’s a deadpan and this is how deadpans are; expressionless fools of the first-order. So I had to make do with a cosmetic bath at best. Thank God I had completed the other daily abolitions before the taps ran dry me.

Note to self: Send an email to the manufacturers of AXE deodorant for a job well done; they just might give me a free deodorant or two.

9:45AM: Wading through the maddening Hyderabad
traffic

Other than the minor inconveniences of lost sleep and the tap running dry on me, the day was pretty normal. As I neared office I thanked God for helping me beat the traffic and reach office just in time to for the telephonic interview I had to take at sharp 11.

Just when I thought that the worst was behind me, my bike stopped for no apparent reason whatsoever. Me and my big mouth! I was a good 500 meters from my office, and about a kilometer
away from the nearest mechanic. Being time pressed, I decided to leave the bike where it was and take an auto to work.

10:20AM:Scarcity of conference rooms

Once in the office, I checked my email, dumped my stuff and began my search for a conference room. I was told about this interview at the eleventh hour and could not book a room in advance. But I was sure to find at least one, after all not everyone on my floor be in a meeting, at least one out of the ten we have on our floor would be empty. I did find one such room, it seemed its current occupant was laughing displaying all of his 32 teeth, a clear indication that he was through discussing the important stuff, and was simply whiling away time. Moreover the guy seemed to be nice, and I felt positive that if I were to request him, he would most certainly vacate the room a bit little early than what he would have liked. But on second thoughts, I decided against it. I’ve seen the nicest of people draw daggers on each other to defend, not a bag full of gold, but a conference room. I made a quick getaway and barged into the room where the Xerox machine and printers are installed, which was empty.

This printer room is quite barren most of the time so there was a good chance that I could get over with the interview. A minute or two later, a couple of guys walked in, probably to collect prints etc. But they too were looking for a peaceful corner, not to interview someone, but to mourn at a needless expenditure of Rs.500. Apparently the night before, these guys had watched the latest Bollywood flick, Shootout at Lokhandwala, but didn’t like it at all so they wanted to mourn in private for having wasted money.

Initially I tried ignoring them, but when they got too loud to ignore, I too raised my voice just a notch as a hint they were disturbing me,especially because I was doing something far more important. But they just wouldn’t take any hints and rather shamelessly, continued with their useless discussion, which was driving me mad. So fuming with rage, I exited that room as well.

On my way out, I couldn’t help but laugh at these guys. On one hand, they regretted spending money a silly movie, and on the other, they seemed pretty ok with wasting time talking about the same movie. I rescheduled the call for 1PM and went for lunch, hoping that the post lunch session would be better than what I had just been through.

6 PM: Home Sweet Home

As I had feared, I wasn’t able t get any conference room even in the post lunch session. Unlike before, this time round I did not go the printer room, or for that matter, any other room. I headed for the car parking in the basement. Eventually, I did manage to finish the interview and it went well. But it had left me soaking wet from head to toe, not with water, but with my sweat. I was perspiring like a pig, a dog, and a human put together. Feeling filthy, I decided to call it a day and headed straight for home. But before that, I needed to tie up one more loose end. My faithful and much-loved bike of ten years was still parked on the roadside waiting for a mechanic to breathe life into it. Eventually after another hour of struggling and sweating, I finally headed for home.

00:05 AMTalking to You

As I sit here writing this post, the mere thoughts on the events of the day are making me sweat, so if I continue writing, I just might dissolve in my own sweat. Sequels seem to be the order of the day, so I too might do a follow-up post some other time.

In hindsight, I can only laugh at what happened. Even more when I think that I had spent the entire day playing victim to Murphy’s law, which states “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time.”

I couldn’t agree more.