Everyone has had his or her fair share of embarrassing situations in life, but I think I've had a few more.
It began when I was a toddler. On an evening outing with my sweet Mom, I watched as she shopped for fruits and vegetables at our colony store. "Ma, can I have some of those?" I asked her as I ran to join her on her way back, but went red in the face when I realized it was some other woman holding those shiny red apples, not Mom!
I still remember that look on the stranger's face.
I was a difficult kid, so I bawled most of the time, driving my parents and siblings nuts. One day I was yelling for attention at the top of my voice in our open courtyard, when looking up I saw this stout, grinning, elderly neighbouring uncle peering at me from on top of their side of the dividing wall that separated our 'moris'..(the place we used to wash utensils). I drove him up the wall! Quite literally! I shut up at once and ran full speed inside.
School life was mostly fun, but I did have some trying times.
One day our fifth grade math sir lifted up my notebook(I sat on the front bench) to show the class how we ought to write our sums , he flipped to the last page only to see my cartoon of a peon ringing the bell!
He was speechless..so was the class. The bell rang as if on cue but only after the class had burst into peals of unconcealed laughter and a big, 'How shabby!' compliment from our sir.
Reminds me of the time I, a fourth grader, sat with secondary school seniors writing an exam. I needed some more paper to write on. Having overheard the others asking for some 'supplement', I stood up and asked instead for a 'compliment'.
Nobody noticed. Thankfully.
Marriage didn't make me any wiser though. I remember myself confidently but absently walking into a shop wearing sunglasses and asking the poor guy to turn on the lights.Why was his shop so dark?
This woman living upstairs, a fair Punjabi, rang our doorbell unannounced. We lived in Delhi then.
"Madam hai?" she queried, as I stood before her in soiled work clothes. I did all my housework all my myself then.
"Mai hi madam.." I said smilingly. Blushing.
She stood red faced too and fled soon after.
My tryst with embarrassing times never ends.
Just days ago I was at the airport awaiting my son's arrival one night. I suddenly saw him approaching from a distance, pushing his baggage trolley. I waved at my tall, bespectacled, hefty looking son(he had put on weight, I noticed, gladly). But he turned out to be somebody else.
Thankfully he hadn't noticed me waving..nor had my hubby, impatiently waiting in our nearby car.
