Tuesday Morning

Tuesday, July 26, 2005
It’s strange how simple things can piss one off right from the morning. I wake up late at 8 o’ clock, when I should be having my shower at 7am. I always set an alarm for 7am and a reminder for 6:30am (that makes two) the night before. But every time the cell phone vibrates, I conveniently wake up, put it off equally comfortably and resume my slumber. The next time I find myself awake and finally alarmed, I barely have time to attend my 9 o’ clock class…especially Da Silva’s English class, as of today’s.

Anyway, I brush my teeth, rush for a quick bath taking only 10 minutes. I iron my white top, which earned me quite a scolding from my mother for not having done it the night before. I leave out the drier considering the rush, and in the process forget my punch clip. Then comes the real part. Food. Sad and revolting, early in the morning, when you are served boiled egg with rice. I somehow manage to squeeze them all down my sleepy and not enough dilated oesophagus.

When I think I have forgotten nothing to take, including the keys, I am vexed by the perpetual dirt, which had accumulated on my shoes. I take one moment to make the wrong decision, wear my new shoes, the one with the funny keys and step out into the unknown. And the unknown bolts into a drizzle from the heavens and also under my feet, the muddy water ever malicious of my shoes, and it starts raining harder. It’s now 8:30am and I am still trying to hail an auto or a ricky. Finally, I get on the rickshaw, cursing the rain like hell, because it only drills a hole through my wallet, as the pullers always charge you extra when you need their service the most. I get to the bus-stand and when I am waiting for the goddamn bus, some zealous driver splashes the filthy water on the streets all over my clothes. I wish I was wearing my raincoat, no matter how much I am teased for wearing it and making an entrance of sort.

The bus takes me to Kasba Post-office stoppage, and I run to chase another bus, which will actually take me to my college (not quite though, since I still have to walk a while…) and when I have in fact run to catch the bus, I discover that it belongs to some other route. The bus can be deceptive, you see. The bus with the same name may have two routes.When I find my bus, I find difficulty saving my white top and my bare hands from being brushed by a filthy oil-head, who would not budge an inch. I am lucky to get a seat though, after a while.

The grand finale is inaugurated by three ‘loochchyas’, who made the mistake of walking close by me and eyeing me top to bottom. I shout at them, threatening to dump them at the police station. I seriously don’t understand how men can manage to be horny at any random girl, when the road is hustling due to the office-going passengers. I mean, what a way to start a day: get molested by any random guy on the roads! And not to mention the interminable vista of ogling B.Com all-male students in the college, who refuse to acknowledge that they really don’t know me.