He is bewildered. He doesn’t know what ballet flats are. He doesn’t remember anything that I own being chequered. As I hobble awkwardly around, I roll my eyes towards the skies and in the same gesture of disdain, thank unknown powers that my Ma is at home.
On the phone, I tell the man to go home and repeat my instructions to Ma. As predicted, Ma promptly takes the ballet flats out and sends him back with them. He arrives, a sheepish knight in shining armour, slaying morning traffic bravely. I pull his cheeks and say goodbye.
While walking the last stretch to my office, an old guy-friend calls, all the way from a foreign land with skewed time zones. I relate the incident, still ripe in my head. He is equally confused. He can’t understand what ballet flats are. And then the guy argues that I could have avoided confusion by asking my hubby to get whatever footwear was available immediately. I tell him that I didn’t have anything else that would go with a salwar kameez, so I had to be specific. Now, he can’t understand why I couldn’t wear a pair of beatles or sneakers with salwar kameez! That is where I wish him luck in life and give up.
I enter office and reach my cubby hole, only to find that my system is not working. The screen just won’t respond. Not to abusive language, not to my regular kick to the CPU. Plus, the tech support is not in yet. After trying for half-an-hour, resisting the feeling to pull out all the wires and rip open the monitor with a hatchet, I call my software engineer hubby. I explain everything, he asks me a couple of questions calmly (which don’t make much sense to me but I do answer), and apparently gets it!
He plunges into a nerdy explanation, full of RAMs and mother boards. I completely blank-out and tell him to watch his language. He again tries. It’s all noise to me! I stare at my smartphone accusingly. Then it hits me. He’s taking revenge for the ballet flats, isn’t he? He must be rolling his eyes skywards! The nerve of this cheeky fellow!! But what am I gonna say? So, I mumble that tech support has arrived and cut him off. To complete the revenge, he even pulls my cheeks in the evening. Hmph!