I think there are days when you are accident prone. Today was one of those days for me. As usual I woke up later than I have to in the morning and got ready for office in a hurry. I reached the bus stop and as I was in a hurry I tried to get onto the first bus I saw but I kept asking if that bus goes to the Vashi bus stand. Nobody replied and that was something very strange. And I was holding onto the bus by a window, and then, the guy who was sitting near that window pulled it down and I narrowly escaped getting my fingers broken. The bus left without me.

Then I thought I will take a rickshaw. The first rickshaw’s driver refused me because I was going to the bus stand. I was about to take a decision never to take a rickshaw again when another rickshaw stopped near me and invited me, ready to take me to anywhere in the world. So I hopped in and the rickshaw stopped at the bus stand and while I was getting down, my hand, which for some reason lagged behind, hit the side of rickshaw and I heard something crack and saw that the panel which covered the side had broken. Luckily, the driver didn’t see that. Surprisingly, my hand was not hurt and I wondered if all those mosquito bites have mutated me into a mosquito man or something (Are all vampires mosquito men? They drink blood, they can fly, and they are active in the night).

I went to the bus stand and then the bus came and there was the usual jostling to get in. I had misjudged where the bus would stop, so I had to run a bit to make sure I was in front of the crowd. Then something like a thread wrapped around my shoulder, but I ignored it. As I reached the door of the bus and was about to get in, I heard a shout behind me and I realized that there was a man at the end of the thread and that the thread was not a thread, but a mobile phone’s ear phone cord. The earphone had developed some affinity towards my tee shirt and had got stuck in it. The owner, a rather bulky man, who was under the impression that someone was stealing his phone had kept pace with me and with some difficulty, extracted the earphone from my tee shirt, all the while expressing sincere doubts about my eye sight in the choicest of Hindi words. It seems the man was talking on his phone when I ran to catch the bus in my hand-flailing-all-around-borrowed-from- swimming style. I hope he was not explaining to his wife the reason behind the lip shaped red stain on his shirt.

It is afternoon now. I hope the ‘accident quota’ for today is over and the commute back home will be incident free. Also I am planning to swim in the evening. I hope you won’t read about a shark attack in a swimming pool tomorrow.