Column

Tales from the Locker room

So, the grand ol’ man has finally started emptying buckets on our collective heads. It’s what we sexually inactive members of the Crustacean family call a wet weekend. However, it wasn’t just an ordinary weekend, which would test my courage, fortitude, and above all the ability to sit through a long boring conversation with Shriman Kunal Vijayakar—a man who traditionally can turn a titillating story on Pamela Anderson’s implants into an absolutely boring one.

Firstly, we had a race against time, dropping my wife and her two children (who also happen to be mine, at least two days a week) to the airport. The wife’s sister, a woman I’m very close to and whom I’ve met for a sum total of 45 seconds in my life, was finally getting married. Since the wedding was in America, instead of the normal expense of Rs 51 plus in an old white envelope, her getting married meant a loss in lakhs for us.

In fact, so upset was I with her decision to get married in America that I had a good mind to withdraw the Rs 51 as well as the old white envelope. However, better sense and a catalyst in the form of my wife’s formidable chappals forced me to reconsider. Honestly, I’ve hidden the envelope.

As we raced to the airport I enlisted the support of Shri Vijayakar, a man who was built for the rains. Wearing his traditional rainwear—a windcheater on top and nothing below—Shri Vijayakar took to the wheel. As he absurdly changed routes several times for absolutely no reason, I realised that the attire was the least of his problems. With clinical efficiency he hit all 784 pot holes on the journey. And due to his calculations, permutations and mind-numbing lane combinations, we turned a 24 kilometre journey into a voyage equal to circumventing the globe twice.

But the real challenge was still to come. As we waved our byes to the family, I prepared myself for the return journey for a considerable distance with the tedious conversation of Shri Vijayakar. As we turned a corner, he promptly brought up a scientific discourse on the sustained values of breast-implants. I knew that on the return journey potholes and the rain would be the least of the problems!