Wednesday, April 23, 2008

The Jeans

I bought a jeans for myself during the thanksgiving sale last year. Fortunately or unfortunately it fitted me well except that it was too long. Well, just to clarify, the fortune here is about being able to find a jeans of my size. Otherwise I tend to bank on my India trips to build up the pile for my jeans and trousers. There in the mall when I actually found something that fit me so well, the fact that there was a length problem seemed too minuscule to come in the way of buying it. Happy and chirpy I came back home and had a long look at it. I was very excited. This was my second treasure hunt in the past 4 years here where I actually dug gold.

It being close to the end of semester, I was too busy bothering about getting it altered immediately. So I waited for the winter vacation. Winter vacation came and went and my lazy self never got "the work" done. January, the new semester began. And then I started freaking out a little. Every time I would plan to get it altered something would come in the way and it would get postponed. There were too many variables. The algorithm went like this:
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Boolean Muhoorat=FALSE; Int Freaking-out=50;

If (Jeans-present==TRUE) AND (Memory-in-place==TRUE) AND (Available-time==TRUE) AND (No-travel-plans==TRUE) AND (Shop-timings-right==TRUE)
Muhoorat=TRUE;
else
Freaking-out+=5;

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Often one of these culprits would turn out to be FALSE and my head would get hotter. Later I tried to fix things a little by keeping the Jeans and its alteration measurements in a bag inside my car, so that it was in an ever-ready state. Somehow with time the priority of this task became so high that all except shop timings part got fixed. I had shortlisted a shop for this but the last couple of times I ended up going at the wrong times and found it to be closed.

Then one fine day, it happened. It was a Tuesday, I was going home around 5:30pm, the shop was open until 6pm I remembered, I had the jeans in my car, my wallet with me. Everything seemed right. I parked my car and walked up to the shop. I checked my watch and the timings on the door. It was 5:50pm and the shop was open until 6. But as I tried to enter the door would not open. It was a glass door and I tried to take a peek inside. The lights were on, the fan was running, and there was a lineup of clothes on the table. It seemed like someone was definitely inside working on the stuff. As I peeked further, I saw a door inside the shop that seemed like an entrance to another room, the light of which was also on. So I decided to knock (yes, even though the door was locked. I wanted to be a true Indian that day). A minute passed and nobody appeared. I started knocking harder (Yeah, believe that!). "Come on, I had to make it happen today", I thought.

A bald Asian guy came out from the inner room and gave a perplexed look. Then he made a gesture with his hand that clearly said We are not open. I did not want to give up. I gestured to the wall clock and then my watch trying to indicate that there were still 5-10 minutes. He gave one hard look at me and then came up to the door and opened it. My heart rejoiced but quickly skipped a beat noticing that he stood at the door barring the entrance. At the first opportunity I went on blabbering about how there were still 5 minutes and it would be great if he could let me in and give this jeans for "just" length shortening etc. Initially he seemed confused and looked at the clock but then gathering himself back, he said, "Ma'am, we are closed. It is a Monday today".

Those last words struck me hard like iron. Monday? How could it be Monday today? I had worked yesterday also and ... Well, after a big pause when finally my cluttered mind "got it", the lighter side of me took over and I began laughing at myself. This whole episode had taken such a toll on me that I had almost gotten crazy. Finally the Muhoorat did arrive and the auspicious happened the very next day itself (from the same shop, yes I went there again).

I have been wearing that jeans pretty often since then and I love it. I did resolve however never to go for the alteration option again given my task execution abilities.