Love with Levity

 

Levity is one word I’m in love with. I cling on to it as much as I can like a victim from a crashing plane to a parachute. As much as I’m in love with this word, I guess I irk people around me!

 

You’ve forgotten the keys! – Oh its ok – I can spend another hour outside reading my ‘fiction’ with the help of the streetlight (err was it Tolstoy who did it before?..not sure!!). You’ve taken all the keys with you! – Borrow the neighbor’s lock for once! Keep some money with you – Oh I have the bus fare. You haven’t combed your hair, your bindi is not there, you look like a disaster!– You say the same when im ‘best dressed’ with all possible feats to beautify myself! Anyways I’ll carry a comb and ask my colleague for a Bindi! Oh I love hop the wall, pop the corn life I was floating through.

 

It isn’t all that easy everyday I guess. Especially when I get into a Volvo to escape the ‘poking crowd’ and sit next to the ‘well dressed gentleman’ ahem no I’m completely conscious of the probability of the readers in here and I swear I didn’t notice any further. Anyways It wasn’t easy to sit there and search a bag that is ditto to a school bag and churn out coins from among all the other trashes (my endeavor to save the roads from litter.. you see) and count it right there with a stranger staring at you as though you have landed right from another planet all for the heck of forgetting your purse! I almost thought I might have to ask for a rupee or 2 when fortunately one of the innermost pockets of the bag gifted me a long forgotten coin!

 

So I entirely understood the plight of another ‘well-dressed’ person with an ID card and US accent climbed up to the first floor of the building and knocked at our door for 70Rs! He even offered to keep his gold plated watch with us. Since Eby was there to deal with the whole situation I conveniently sat there behind the curtain in the comfortable sofa enjoying my ‘chocolate ice cream’ only to be shocked to hear my husband deny that man.

 

??!! He ought to be in utter disaster if he had all the patience in the world to learn US accent (quite perfectly I would say), and then go around for 70Rs! But Eby had for a change become a Sherlock Holmes! How was he drunk this early? He said he met with an accident, Y dint he have any dust or dirt in his clothes, why did he climb up till the first floor when there were actually more people downstairs and other houses nearby? Why did he fumble when I said there weren’t any bachelors in the house he claimed to be his friend’s house? Why didn’t he approach occupants of the same building who would have at least known his friend? Why couldn’t he call up a person he knew? Why didn’t he take an auto to someone he knew and then pay the Rick fellow? What if I kept his watch here and he later claimed that I robbed him of all his belongings and the watch was a proof! What with the happenings here for the past few weeks, how can I trust anyone! (Did I hear appreciations for living with a detective? J thank you!)

 

So the next time I forget my lock inside and ask for another lock I’d better be safe that the neighbor doesn’t think me a crook forging keys! Next time I dream of borrowing a rupee or two I better not risk being mistaken for a planned deceptive ‘watever’! I can’t blame Eby for being reluctant to part with an odd figure of 70 bucks to a drunk ‘well dressed’ stranger. Nor can I come to think that a person who looked like that would intend to do anything! But the fact is, his branded clothes, shoes or a gold plated watch & accent did not save him from the humiliation of being turned down for 70rs thanks to the happenings around us in Bangalore. For here, with the horrendous surging of murders & robbery, people sure seem to go to hell in a handbasket! No one seem to have any clue whom to trust and whom not to.       

 

There was a time when the world and our thinking were not like this. A time when the good old village of mine, never heard of conning. There was a time when you step out of your house with a bruise and you have your whole village asking about it. Don’t know about other cities but thanks to the cops in Bangalore (who seem to be in an indefinite slumber) and the crime rates soaring up faster than skyrockets – we are left on our own. Get hit, Get lost, Get strangled no one would help or rather no one would dare to!! That extra money, extra pair of keys and extra caution L seems inevitable! Alvida dear levity!