Today was a great day. A good day at the hospital except for a
comment or two from Chuck which sunk my spirits. He was asking me if I
could get our friend a gift on his wedding. He said that I've been an
unreliable person in the last few weeks and therefore, needed double
confirmation that I would do the purchase. He repeated it.
I was surprised at this apparent lack of trust-worthiness that my
friend found in me. Since it came from Chuck I felt bad. In fact I
told him immediately that just like two days back when he had brought
a smile back to my face, he'd put me down. I felt even worse when he
said that that is how he felt every morning when I wouldn't wake up to
join him for jogging.
A couple of hours later, I was walking to the parking lot to my
scooter thinking what had suddenly gone wrong in my life. I was low in
self-esteem and that is exactly why I felt bad when someone questioned
my integrity.
When I reached there, I saw Chuck standing there talking to someone
on the mobile phone. He waved at me as soon as he saw me. I walked up
to him undecided on what to say. It was easy to make out that it was
his fiance at the other end. In between, he asked me if I would join
him for lunch. I said yes.
I gave him a lift on my scooter and it was not until that we had
found a table that he hung up on the phone. Immediately he apologized
me for what had happened in the morning. I apologized for behaving the
way I was during the last few weeks. He offered me a lunch to make it
up at a restaruant of my choice. I said that was unnecessary.
When we finished lunch I felt at ease with my life.
Then we went for shopping for the gift. It took a lot of time to
finally get what we wanted; a Kama Sutra honeymoon pack. It was a
wonderful time even though we couldn't find one. Whenever we walked up
to a store to ask for condoms, the shopkeepers would seem stunned and
always tried to be evasive. Instead, we went to a big medical store in
the city, got a sample of all the varities of condoms available and a
lubricant jelly. We got it packed in a big Kama Sutra condom box. Then
we went shopping in a book store. We bought a couple of cheap versions
of the book 'Kama Sutra' and another book on the Arabic Technique of
Sex called 'The Perfumed Garden'.
Since Chuck was on duty, I left him at the hospital and went to
Ray's room. We spent some time going through the sex manuals and found
a lot of interesting stuff regarding oral sex and it's practice in
ancient India. According to the books, oral sex was practiced
extensively by Hindus and sodomy was introduced by the Muslims.
Then, I went to a colleague room in the hostel to try my hand at
troubleshooting a computer which was acting up. I tried my level best
to re-install Windows 98. But a hardware problem kept me at bay.
After that, Ray wanted me to take a look at the common 'puter at
the hostel. It was getting stuck after it got booted. It didn't take
me much time to note that it was due to some virus/worm as the
computer was laden with spyware and junk downloads and didn't have a
firewall or an updated antivirus software.
I removed most of the crap and got the system back to booting
properly. But couldn't finish the job as the network adapter was not
working which made it impossible for me to access the internet so as
to get an updated version of antivirus software.
After that, I and Ray decided to go out to have dinner. We went to
our favorite vegetarian restaurant. Had a delicious meal. Then hung
out at public park watching out for silverfoxes. Then we went for a
movie. We had been indecisive about the movie after our last
experience. We finally decided on a hindi flick called 'Naach'.
Thankfully, our decision was spot on! The movie was excellent. It
is much different from the average Bollywood sizzler and is probably
the best Hindi movie I have watched this year.
<
I woke up to see Yasser Arafat's package outlined clearly in the front page of India's national newspaper, The Hindu. Not a bad start.
