It was around 5 o clock in the evening. The sun had begun its western descent and the December air was getting chilly. i was near Lower Parel station, making my way home from college. my day had been absolutely awful. one of those terrible days when nothing goes your way, where the only luck you seem to have is bad luck and where everything you do is doomed to fail, wither, or in general erupt in flames and explode.
The moment i had stepped out of the house, i had the pleasure of being the human toilet to some passing bird, whom by the colour and odour of the stool sample that i found on my white T-shirt, i judged to be a crow. I brushed it off, saying to myself that whenever a crow shits on your white T-shirt it brings good luck, but i was gravely mistaken. The trains were delayed and i reached college late and missed the first lecture. the one where the teacher took the 25 mark assignment. in the second lecture i was cordially asked to answer a question and then cordially asked to leave the class when i began acting like aamir khan from Ghajini pleading memory loss.
it was with this heavy emotional baggage of a such an awful day, that i was making my way back home. If devdas were to have met me now, i would have hugged him tight and told him that i didnt blame him for spending most of his time in shady bars with his best friend johnny walker.
it was then just as i had taken the first right, which leads on to the road that leads to my home, that i saw a procession of young men walking toward me. there must have been around 11 of them. 4 out of the bunch had a wonderful tere naam inspired haircut and had fringes of hair falling in front of their eyes, which they regularly brushed off in true salman khan style. all of them looked like they had nicknames which ran along the lines of chottu, raja, pappu and babloo and all of them without exception carried one sporting equipment, which from left to to right went from cricket bat, golf club, hockey stick, tennis racket, stump, stump, stump, baseball bat, sword, billiards stick and croquet mallet, the last one of which looked very clumsy when in the hands of a guy whose possible nickname was pandoo. Ahh here comes a team of err... a sports team, i found myself thinking, and smiling. for the lot of them looked rather silly with their high waist pants, fashion street shirts, their funny walking style, their eve-teaser attitude and above all their eclectic sports gear.
they were headed straight toward me and as they got closer i could see that here was a gang of young men who were greatly flustered. they were talking in loud excited voices about something and by the looks of it they werent too pleased with whatever they were talking about. Just as i was about to pass them by i heard a voice say :
"Bhaisaab, where is this Ford Car showroom?"
i looked up and saw that the bloke with the sword, whose name was probably bachhu, had addressed his query to me. i began wondering what this sports team wanted to do by going to a car showroom, its not the ideal place to play sports you see. and then the thought struck me that they probably wanted to gift their coach a brand new ford indigo, for his excellent support and coaching, on his 56th birthday. so without further hesitation i answered:
"go straight and take the third right. then go toward the bus stop and go left. then walk under the bridge till you come to a signal. there you will find seven roads, take the third one from the left and go straight for ten minutes and there you shall find your ford car showroom."
i repeated it again, after they found someone from amongst themselves who could write the instructions down.
they thanked me profusely and went unhappily on their way and i went unhappily along mine.
that evening i switched on the television and tuned into the news, to find to my surprise, the following news being read out by a woman, who clearly should have been a model,
"An unruly mob of uncouth youths, wrecked the ford car showroom earlier today at around 5:30 pm. the youths had first broken into and robbed a sports shop and had then made their way to the showroom. reports now tell us that the youths used to employees in the ford motor factory but were layed off due to recession. they claim to have vandalized the showroom as an act of revenge."
the TV footage showed my friends chottu, babloo, pappu, pintoo, laloo, raja and bacchu as they raged with testosterone and wreaked havoc inside the Ford Car showroom. i sighed. if only....
till today i feel guilty, but that is How I trashed a Ford car showroom or Oops its not my fault.
-By Editor Man.
