The Perfect Vacation

"The Perfect Vacation" is a construct as phantasmal as the elusive Sasquatch.  I have addressed this idea previously as well, and every vacation we undertake seems to only vindicate this hypothesis.  It is particularly uncanny how minor inconveniences quickly devolve into major impediments when on a vacation.  

Why this kolaveri, you ask?  Lemme tell you...

9:30 PM

We checked into the highway-side hotel in southern West Virginia.  The kids were still wide awake, so we were able to actually walk through the lobby, into the elevator, down the hallway, and into our room like regular humans, as opposed to our usual MO of skedaddling through the concourse like two kidnappers with two napping kids.  We entered our room and turned on the light.  The room was smaller than I had imagined, but it looked alright.  Pavana threw her customary what's-that-smell glance at me and I appeased her with my all-is-well expression.  No complaints there.  We quietly began unpacking for the night while the kids began their usual I-know-this-is-a-bed-but-I-will-pretend-this-is-a-trampoline jumping activity.  All certainly was well.  Up until 9:35 PM...

9:35 PM

It all started with a bathroom visitation.  You know how when you see a ball-type doorknob on the bathroom door, you automatically expect it contain a built-in lockset comprising of a lock button on one side?  Well, this doorknob had no lock button.  It looked exactly the same on both sides.  Not a big deal, I thought to myself, and came out and appraised Pavana of what I considered an insignificant shortcoming.  

That's when I received my first eye-roll.

9:50 PM

After substantial badgering and hounding, Medha finally decided to do us a favor by using the restroom and brushing her teeth.  When she was done, she came out pulled the bathroom door shut behind her.  Two minutes later, Pavana tried to to open the door.  It was locked!

"I need to pee", said Pavana irritably.

"So do I", said Medha.

Pavana and I looked at Medha, then at each other. 

"What did you do in the bathroom two minutes ago?", Pavana began interrogating Medha.

"And how did you lock the door before closing it behind you?", I added.

"Amma...", Medha began in her signature howl, "I was first trying to wash my hands but I couldn't find the soap.  Then I was looking for my toothbrush, but I couldn't find it.  So I came out to look for my toothbrush.  You never gave me the toothbrush and paste..."

"So you didn't brush either?"

"Amma... you..."

This wasn't going well.  Both of them had ignored the real problem.  I interrupted with: "Let me call the front desk".

I received my second eye-roll.

10:05 PM  

The receptionist was in our room inspecting the bathroom doorknob.  "There should be a hole for emergency unlocking...", she mumbled as she felt the doorknob.

"There's none.  I checked", I said, "and the inside didn't even have a lock button".

"That's not possible", she said.

"Lalit", Pavana interjected, "Mira needs to sleep.  It is late".

"Let me see if I can find the maintenance guy", said the receptionist.

"Please do", I said, "and please tell him that the doorknob has no lock".

"That's not possible", she said again as she walked away.

I received my third eye-roll.

10:20 PM

The lights in the room were off now and Pavana was trying to make Mira sleep.  The maintenance guy, the receptionist, Medha, and I were huddled around the doorknob like a bunch of evil scientists watching their guinea pig sprout a third ear or something.  "There should be a hole for emergency unlocking...", said the maintenance guy, feeling the doorknob.

"There's none.  I checked", I repeated and added again, "and the inside didn't have a lock button".

"That's not possible", the maintenance guy and the receptionist chorused.

"Lalit", Pavana called out from the darkness, "I'm trying to make Mira sleep.  Medha needs to sleep too."

"Appa, I need to pee", Medha joined in inaptly.

This disruption seemed to flip some switch in the maintenance guy's head, for he instantly produced a giant flat head screwdriver from somewhere, jammed it between the door and doorframe, and basically just muscled the door open like a barbarian.  I half expected him to start beating his chest and start shrieking in triumph, but instead he returned to his meek self.  "Here you go", he said and began walking away.

"Wait...", I called, "how do we lock the door?  There's no lock button!"

"That's not possible", chorused the maintenance guy and the receptionist again.

I sensed a fourth eye-roll cut through the darkness.

11:00 PM

By this time Medha was asleep, snoring softly like a cat.  Pavana was humming Mira's preferred one-note lullaby song into her half awake ears.  The white noise machine roared in one corner of the room.  The receptionist was long gone.  The maintenance guy however was still in our room, huffing and puffing, trying to install a new doorknob with a conventional lock-set.  It hadn't taken me more than a few seconds to convince him of the absence of any kind of lock mechanism in the original doorknob, but it was taking him forever to install the new doorknob.  By the time he had finished installing the rosette and the latch bolt, I had lost all patience.  The actual knobs on both sides were yet to be installed and for some reason he was sweating and gasping for breath.  The doorknob of Room 226 was clearly taking a toll on him.  Lest the dude should collapse under the intense strain of doorknob installation, I asked him to leave it half installed as is.  The dude cautioned me saying that since the spring loaded latch was installed without the doorknob spindle engaged, it would be impossible to open the door once closed.  DO NOT close the door, he warned.  We'll manage, I said impatiently.  He left.

10:00 AM the next day

"Front desk?", I yelled frantically into the phone, "my wife is locked inside the bathroom!"

Reasonably Foreseeable Misuse

When it comes to the toddler toys in our home, reasonably foreseeable misuse usually happens at the highest possible occurrence rate, causing the manifestation of hazardous situations that are unforeseeable to even the most experienced toy manufacturers.  Somehow, toys too are designed in such a way that our kids invariably misconstrue their intended uses and use environments.  Videlicet, this stroller, which is the most awkwardly sized baby buggy known to mankind.

This stroller belongs to the loot obtained by dint of Pavana's conquests on Facebook Marketplace, the nonpareil of the Marché aux Puces de internet based commodity economics.  The principal purpose of this stroller was ordained to be that of a simple playtime diversion for Mira wherein she would be expected to place members of her collection of stuffed simulations of little animals and humans in the stroller and wheel them around the house.  The amusing thing is that Mira used the stroller according to its intended use literally once.  Since then the stroller has only served purposes necessitated by other unrelated games.  For instance, last Friday she loaded the stroller with a small plastic duck, three magnet-tiles and some rocks from her rock collection (originally from our landscaping, which has been long decimated), and left it on the deck.  The poor stroller endured the weight of all these objects and stood quietly on the deck for two full days, weathering the harshest of suns and heaviest of rains.  On Sunday morning, Mira decided to bring the stroller back into the house, all wet and mucky.  She threw her choicest tantrum to convince us to not only let her ruin her outfit by sitting in the stroller amid all the muck but also have Medha ‘stroll’ her around the house like a politician being driven around on canvassing rounds!

Eight Minutes of Horror

“Are you sure?”, I asked under my breath.

“Dude, shut up…”, he retorted in a harsh whisper, “just follow me.  No one is gonna know!”

“I’m nervous…”

“Shut up!”

The two of us tiptoed up the last flight of stairs leading up to the roof of the school building.  Our eyes darted around anxiously as we climbed onto the roof.  We proceeded one step at time, making sure no one was watching us.  What made our covert operation seem all the more iniquitous was that it was being carried out in broad daylight.  Sweltering sunlight, to be exact.  But we had no option.  It had to be done.

It had all started the previous day.  With the school annual day function just a day away, one of our Std VII classmates had recklessly spilled two fat drops of water directly onto the school tabla dayan, the tonal head, thus bringing the pitch down unevenly.  The prudent thing to do at that juncture would have been to report the incident promptly to one of our teachers.  However, our tabla player, who was my partner and the fearless leader in the above covert operation, had made the executive decision to not report.  “काही तरी करू आपण (we’ll figure out a way)”, he had said.  The three of us had then put our heads together and tried to come up with some idea.  After a few minutes we had hit ourselves up against what we had thought was a brilliant scheme, viz. leaving the dayan under the afternoon sun because the water-spiller, who incidentally was also our harmonium player, had heard from somewhere that ‘उन्हात तबला चढतो (the tabla goes up in pitch under the sun)’.

“What kind of a traitor is he?”, I whispered loudly to my leader as I gingerly closed the stairway door on the roof, “this whole thing was his idea, and he chickens out now!”

“One more word out of you and I will tell Madam that it was your idea… now shut up!”, the fearless leader hissed back at me.

“Okay, okay…”

We found a sunny spot next to the water tank, placed the dayan there, and ran back down the stairs as quickly and quietly as we could.

Later that evening, when everyone was getting ready for the big event, the two of us, all dressed and neat combed etc., went up onto the roof secretly to retrieve the dayan, and lo, there it was!  Disaster staring at us right in our faces!  A gaping hole ran right through the middle of the dayan, bisecting the syahi (the black spot).  It turned out that our double-crossing water-spilling harmoniumist was absolutely right about the sun’s ability to tighten the head of the dayan, for it had tightened it enough to crack under the tension!

Once we returned, the fearless leader intercepted the water-spiller backstage and said certain things that I cannot type here (yes, Std VII kids are old enough!).  I stood about 10 feet away, my heart racing.  20 minutes later, the three of us were on stage.  We were all sweating.  The water-spiller leaned over and asked me the one question he shouldn’t have been asking on stage, especially after having practiced together that whole month: “Which Raag are you singing?”

I gave him a stern look and said in my mind all the things the fearless leader had said 20 minutes ago.

“अरे tension आलंय… समजून घे (Dude, I’m nervous… please understand)!”, he said.

All nerves, I started my alaap in Raag Bihag.  The water-spiller was so nervous that he couldn’t play anything constructive.  Instead he just held down Sa with a trembling finger.  Not the worst situation from a performance standpoint, I solacingly said to myself.  I managed to complete my alaap successfully.

Then, it began.

The moment I started the bandish Kaanhaa Jaa Re Jaa Re in Madhyalaya Teentaal, the fearless leader launched into a totally irrelevant Drut Ektaal on the cracked tabla.  I glared at him in horror.  Our Madam, who was standing in the wings slightly downstage from us started making hieroglyphic gestures toward us.  The severe look on her face sent a shiver down my spine.  There was no doubt that she had noticed the injury the dayan had endured.  The fearless leader, not so fearless anymore, panicked and suddenly changed the theka to an ultra slow Madhyalaya Teentaal.  As I was trying to decipher the weird sounding bols emanating from the cracked tabla to figure out which matra he was on and adjust the bandish line I was singing, I suddenly heard random notes coming from the direction of the water-spiller.  I quickly turned to him and found him frantically searching for the right key to play on the harmonium.  I had no idea what had happened.  Maybe his finger had slipped and he had forgotten where Sa was?   Madam had now gone beet red in her face and looked like she was about to explode.

The performance ended up being a painful 8 minutes of sur searching, bol searching, and soul searching.  The longest 8 minutes of my life without a doubt, not to mention the proper dressing down the three of us received post-performance!

For the next few days, I kept wondering why the water-spiller had played those ridiculously random notes during the performance.  It took me a good couple of weeks to finally learn that the water-spiller had extemporaneously come up with the brilliant idea of matching his Sa with the weird sound of the cracked dayan, and was trying to locate the note while the performance was going on!