The reason there’s been an absence of Fillets lately is that I’ve had midsem tests going on, and surprisingly, I’ve been studying instead of composing Fillets. Thus, this news is a bit dated- almost a week old. Anyway, to continue.
Cosmic justice moves in mysterious ways.
Me, Sarker and Vaibhav Anand aka Kanchha were returning from dinner outside about two weeks ago, when Kanchha decided to make a phones call to one of his girlfriends (he has two). He popped into a nearby PCO and asked us to wait.
Not an altogether unreasonable request, you might think, but Kanchha went on to exceed all bounds of propriety by conducting a 2956 seconds (almost 50 minutes) long phone conversation. In the meantime, Sarker and me, who were suffering from chronic sharifapa that night, hung about and muttered imprecations instead of abandoning Kanhchha.
One could claim that 2956 seconds in not really all that long a time. There are people, some of whom receive the W-Fillets in their inboxen, who have performed continuous GK for periods three times as long. That, too, while concurrently solving VMC back exercises and doing a real-time analysis of the GK over ICQ with other Dubyaphiles. And one would be right- it’s not all that long a time to talk to a girlfriend. It is, however, an obscene amount of time to keep your friends waiting.
The midsems intervened, so vengeance had to wait, but I planned to exact is sooner rather than later. But I needn’t have bothered. The Universe proceeded to show Kanchha the error of his ways the very next time we went out.
A promotional stall for a new brand of fizzy jal jeera had been set up in front of Mauji Grocers. We went to investigate, and found that it was handing out free samples. We tried the jal jeera, and found that it was good. Good enough for Kanchha to bend his head down and examine the other flavours on offer in minute detail.
Having finished his examination, Kanchha raised his head. In doing so, he brought it in contact with the little incandescent light cylinder that was providing illumination to the stall. The results were no less spectacular than the exploding gas cylinder I saw recently (See <a href=”http://www.wokay.in/2003/02/28/coffee-bars/”>W-Fillet #9: Wedding Bells III</a>).
What started off as a mere sizzling noise became vastly more entertaining. The first hairs to come in contact flew off Kanchha’s head, smoking as they did so. The hair that did not fly off formed curls that would be the envy of Little Miss Muffet. A few more patches of hair in the close vicinity welded to each other, releasing a foul odour in the process. This odour than lingered about Kanchha’s person for the next twenty four hours, much in the manner of the albatross that haunted the Ancient Mariner.
Kanchha is unabashed, and refuses to see any element of divine retribution in this incident. Of course, me, Sarker and Khera know otherwise.