Direct From the BED...

Kashooooooooooo wakeup!! i heard my sister's voice from somewhere far away, but still it was near enough to wake me up. i stepped out of the bed without opening my eyes, came out of the room, and into the driving seat of the car parked right in front of my room. my hand found the key plugged into the ignition switch, and twisted it to start the car. allowing some time for the engine to get warmed up, i rubbed my eyes open, and adjusted to the light. the gate was already open, and soon i was on my way to drop her to the bus stop.

it has become my routine for quite some time now. every morning, i jump out of the bed, and into the driving seat in as few steps as possible. she opens my room door for me, opens the car door, puts the key in the ignition, opens the gates, and then shouts to wake me up!!. the exercise is planned in such a way that she reaches at the stop exactly when the bus arrives. so, once in a while when i yawn a bit extra while driving, we miss the bus. and then i forget my drowsiness, step on the paddle, and become a hero of The Fast and the furious to catch the bus.

the bus stop is just a bit more than a kilometer away, and it doesnt take me more than ten minutes to get back home. but today, i had planned to withdraw some money from the SCB ATM Machine in I-8, another kilometer away from the stop. i had just started the car after getting the money when i realized that the gas was about to finish. considering that my brother has to take this car to his office in an hour or so, i decided to give him a favour by getting the gas filled up. i turned the car towards the shell gas station which is just about hundred meters away from the ATM machine. while the gas was being filled into my car, i noticed another car beside me whose driver seemed to have jumped into the driving seat directly from his bed. "i'm not alone" i thought!!

the real story starts when i was driving out of the gas station. i noticed a greenish grey alto parked at a distance from the gas dispensers. as soon as my car moved from the dispenser, that alto started to move towards the dispenser. the james bond inside me woke up. the questions that bond brought along were:

why the car was parked at distance when there were idle gas dispensers?
why the car started moving exactly when i left the gas dispenser?

my 007 alarmed that something was wrong. i decide to use the "in" passage to go out, enabiling myself to move toward that suspicious car. getting near to that alto, i saw a lady on the driving seat. that was encouraging, atleast i was not in trouble!! her overall appearance seemed familiar, but i couldnt relate it to anyone in particular. i had a feeling that i have seen her before, maybe a long ago when she was young. the alto was moving towards the gas dispenser. and just when it crossed me, the lady fixed her dupatta nervously. and this act reminded me who she was... she was a colleague of mine!! i mean she IS a colleague of mine!! she has a special and very different style of fixing her dupatta... it didnt take me long to understand why i was not able to recognize her, why she looked older than she normally seems, and why was she avoiding me... she, too, had come directly from bed, and had not applied any makeup!!!

Thursday 4th May, 2006