Miss Cleopatra

I would like you all to meet a person with the help of this small narration. There is nothing special about her. All of us must definitely have met one of her kind in our lives. So recall the name of a similar character in your life and give him/her a smile in memory.

The movie show was supposed to start at 2 p.m. in PVR cinemas, an hour away from my home. The afternoon show had been booked so that we could take a 12 hour long, weekend special slumber. But there are few people on this planet who do not consider this duration to be long enough and hence, very conveniently, extend it to another couple of hours. Most of
the time, they are the ones who are least interested in the movie but agree to come along considering it to be like just another outing for themselves. My roommate is one of those species.

So, where the stipulated wake-up time was 9 a.m. , the latter got up at 11 a.m. and that too after one hour of incessant pleadings and entreaties. Now we had three hours left to start. While the others were busy ironing clothes for the outing, she, suddenly, found out time, enough, to
settle down the house. This activity includes cleaning the shelves, changing bed sheets, wiping the tables with a mop unless they start shining enough like a mirror and last but not the least ,fixing a curtain on a window which did not have any cover all these years but suddenly required one. As a result, another one hour was conveniently killed.

While the others had taken a bath and were getting ready, she was only preparing to enter the washroom to take a once in a year, Cleopatra bath. In the mean time, the rest were all ready to start but their feet had been chained by Miss Cleopatra and hence they had no choice than sit
and grumble. The knocking at the washroom door was falling on deaf ears and the sound of the shower sounded monotonous to all of us.

After three quarters of an hour, she came out .What a heavenly pleasure it was to see her. We sprang up to our feet and were heading towards the door when she stopped us saying that she had more to do. We frowned and decided to leave her. Thankfully ,this trick worked and she dumped her make-up kit in a friend’s bag without any hesitation. Consequently, the bag had become heavy for the poor girl to carry. But Queen Elizabeth of the house did not care much.

It was 1p.m when the local train arrived and we managed to board it despite much pushing.Now the time started running at a speed proportional to that of the train. While applying ten different kinds of blush-ons, Miss Celebrity made sure that it was because of her immense sacrifice that we would be able to reach on time and will not miss the movie.

We were all ears to her list of sacrifices made since morning.

1) She got up early and hence was feeling dizzy.
2) She could not apply her face pack which she thought would eat up another half an hour
so she gave up the idea.
3) She had to arrange the book shelf to find out a long lost book which she actually had to
return to the library but could not , due to lack of time.
4) She bathed for 15 minutes less to give due respect to our incessant knocking.
5) Last but not the least , she had to get ready in the train among the most awkward people staring at her with a fixed gaze.

The list infuriated each one of us but we did not intend to spoil the mood for the movie so we also made a small sacrifice-We did not throw her out of the train.Finally, we reached the theatre. After settling down in our seats, we thanked God for not missing the movie’s first scene, a usual norm which we follow on every movie trip. There was a difference in our prayer this time .In the “thank you” list, we also included my room-mate’s name who was still busy grumbling about the seats. We grinned at the thought and reclined in our seats as the lights dimmed down.

There aren't enough days in a weekend!!

Come Friday and along with it comes gaiety, mirth and happiness all over .The mere fact that the next two days will be workless fills one’s heart and soul with immense pleasure. A Friday evening is never irksome no matter what time we go back home from our respective workplace. We are routinely and miraculously blessed with electrifying energy every fifth day of the week.

The ambience of a workplace on Fridays are marked by happy-at-heart employees wearing clothes that they are comfortable in and foot wear which help them walk with a spring in their feet. Instead of files and folders, weekend plans are exchanged , via mails. The printer who gets bored taking out hard copies of official content which is actually gibberish to him gets to see variety of tickets, be it, a train, bus or a Saturday night movie pass. The entire day is spent planning out the Saturday night dinner or the Sunday breakfast. The eyes attempt an askance towards the clock at regular intervals but the latter appears to have come to a stop.

Somehow the longest working day of the weekends and here come the two most awaited days of the week. Plans start getting listed up in the mind itself. Some of them are the ones which could not be implemented last week while the others are the ones which have been in planning phase even before the last week.

Home comes and the master plan is put into action immediately. The office bag is thrown in one corner of the room, never to be looked again for another couple of days and the TV remote is grabbed immediately, never to go out of hands for the same next two days .The Friday evening is spent watching a Friday blockbuster and munching till the very last packet of the chips in the kitchen is emptied. The eyes which start hurting daily at 11 p.m. sharp feel immensely satisfied to see handsome men jumping from an x storey building instead of struggling with just another set of statistics or just another error in the code. After sometime the TV lulls the eyes to sleep and the night is spent on the sofa with sounds of TV pouring into the ears occasionally.
The next day starts at 12 pm and that too when the back develops cramps for spending the night on the couch. The hand reaches out for the remote control, which, overnight, has managed to hid behind the farthest leg of the sofa after getting an unscrupulous kick from my side. But the urge to watch TV makes me get up and request the poor fellow to help me open my eyes to the world. This cold war is followed by brunch. It includes the most mouth watering maggi ever made. The breakfast –cum-lunch proves to be a tranquilizer and the eyes shut down to sleep again. No prizes for guessing the mooring place.

Evening is spent on the window pane with a hot coffee and a long-neglected book. Dinner with friends, makes the weekend splendid and life, a lot easier .The dinner ends late night without any worries for hangovers, the next day.

The eyes that had not been fortunate enough to see the Saturday morning remain unlucky by missing the Sunday morning as well. They took an extra hour off and opened at 1 p. m…..all thanks to the excruciating headache. No prizes again for guessing the reason behind the pain.

The mechanical brain, rehearsing for a Monday, revises the list of duties that needed to be accomplished over the weekend. But despite incessant knocking at the door of the mind; no pending work is reminded of.

The smile of satisfaction runs along the face and the dutiful mind goes off to sleep .The Sunday is spent shuffling TV channels , finishing another book and chatting away with distant friends and relatives.

As the Sunday evening approaches, the dutiful mind gets up and now the eyes suddenly envisage all the work that had to be completed in these two days .The clothes start overflowing from the laundry bag and the kitchen appears empty with no vegetables to cook next week .The friend who’s birthday is just next week calls up to give an invitation for a treat in a posh restaurant but the heart does not feel good as her call only reminds that her gift had not been bought.

The horrifying dream breaks with another dinner call. The invitation is accepted but the wardrobe finds no suitable apparel. They all appear to be adding glory to the waiting –to-be-emptied laundry bag. Finally, the cacophony of all these elements fall on a deaf ear. The dinner party is attended hale and hearty.

On the way back home, the long list starts appearing again and the heart wishes to add another day in the weekend.