Column

Don’t you just hate it when some one half your size complains how fat they are, and refuses a second helping, just after you’ve accepted one?

Don’t you just hate it when after you’ve finished eulogising on a painting, showing off your new-found art-appreciation skills, the artist comes and hangs it right side up?

Don’t you just hate it when you eat a piece of mithai that came from a box that was actually meant for a colleague, but was mistakenly kept on your desk?

Don’t you just hate it when in your enthusiasm to appear efficient you press ‘Send’ on an email to your boss, minutes before you realise that you have omitted to spell-check it?

Don’t you just hate it when you set aside your fears, and feeling compassionate, reach out to the weird guy whose been calling you — and he turns in to a stalker?

Don’t you just hate it when you snub the garrulous woman sitting next to you on a flight, and you learn she’s your boss’s wife at the next office party?

Don’t you just hate it when after you’ve agreed with your best friend that her boyfriend is a psychopath and a wimp, she makes up with him and tells him every thing you’ve said?

Don’t you just hate it when to make polite conversation with your future father-in-law you declare that stamp-collecting is for losers, and he turns out to be the champion stamp collector in his community?

Don’t you just hate it when the phone rings and after deciding you’re not going to answer it this time — you finally relent and run out of the bath — and it stops just when you pick it up?

Don’t you just hate it when the person whose meal you’ve just shared at work tells you that they’re down with the flu?

Don’t you just hate it when you think of some really clever things say to some one who’s demolished you at a cocktail party — only on the way home in the car?

Don’t you just hate it when after you’ve cancelled going out to an engagement because your feeling miserably ill, you rouse yourself to go down and get some pani puri to cheer yourself up — and are caught eating it by the people whose place you were supposed to be at?

Don’t you just hate it when after haranguing and begging and screaming at a technician to come half way across town to fix a problem on your computer- the problem simply refuses to show up once he’s there?

Don’t you just hate it when you get to the bottom of a piece like this and find that you’ve got another hundred things to say on life’s little awkward moments — but don’t have a column to say it in?

s_malavika@dnaindia.net