They call it "one of those days" (though I'm not too sure who 'they' are, since nobody seems to have the guts to say anything important anymore) and I was faced with a sheer prototype of it today. I made my first big mistake at my new workplace, not out of negligence, but simply by following procedure. The most important of all jobs could not be completed because there were other little things to be taken care of all the time. The peons delayed every single request of mine by at least half an hour, due to the supposed power-struggle of new inducts (which I don't quite understand yet). Later, my only hope in a not so ordinary day,the happiness of shopping, and leaving the store in new clothes, was dampened by half hearted showers of a nervous young monsoon. And the worse was yet to come!
I should have known, when I crossed a traffic light that everybody was blatantly overlooking in plain view of half a dozen policemen who were busy chit-chatting, that I would be in for some traffic-trouble for the sole crime of cursing at them under my breath. The universe has its way of getting back at law abiding citizens with a dirty mouth doesn't it? So, when I saw all the two wheeler parking spaces of the busiest market in my little city over crowded, and decided to park in a not so crowded no parking area, lady luck laughed her guts out. When I returned after 2 hours of my own chit-chatting session, my vehicle had been towed away. The guy on the truck said he had been driving around with it for an hour, and had now dumped it in the control room.
Now the thing with control rooms is that when a towed vehicle reaches there, even the most seasoned officers in the art of corruption cannot let it go without completing official formalities (i.e. with a bribe and no other hassles). There were surely hassles abound because I being the utterly lost person I am did not even remember the registration number of my vehicle. I was blessed to have a smooth talker assisting me there or they would have taken my embarrassment at being stupid for guilt, and robbed me off every penny I had (and I did have a few too many).
The point I'm not so successfully making here is that 'they' also say every cloud has a silver lining (still not sure who this refers to), and mine was the fact that I did pay fine. I did not give money to be stowed away loosely in a thol's back pocket. I made a mistake and duly paid the authorities the amount of money I owed them for making it, and I'm glad. The last time my vehicle was towed away, my darling friends intervened and did not let me bask in the glory of being punished for breaking the law. They talked the eagerly lenient traffic policemen into letting me go without burning a hole in my pocket. What they didn't realize was not that I didn't try to haggle. But that I didn't WANT to.
It was one of those days where everything goes wrong for the sole purpose of making the good seem even better. Sometimes we don't realize the value of the good coming our way, and a few things have to be made absolutely horrible to make us see the brighter side. And when wee do see the brighter side, we learn a little more about ourselves, because it is only by personal preferences that you can tell what you like from what you don't. What I learnt is that I like to be punished when I am wrong. It is my way of settling the score. And the score should always be settled.
