Thumps Up to Number 7 and Sisterhood

Credits: Roberto Quesada for Photography

i remember my friend telling me this. About her most embarrassing day in office. She was wearing her Indian outfit the wrong side out and realized it only when her day got over at the office. Her not so relaxed ride back home still replete with unfinished agendas was ruined when just by chance she noticed the hanging threads. Her thoughts naturally ran in this order.

1) Did they notice it in the office??

2) Oh **** they would have have sniggered behind my back.

3) They must be enjoying a hearty laugh discussing their sloppy woman boss at home.

4) Someone should have been kind and pointed out my mistake to me.

5) How the **** did i do this?

6) Now will the driver also notice it? Maybe he already knows and will peer even closely...??

7) Maybe nobody noticed it at all. Relax!!

i thought then that maybe being the only woman in the office could be quite something. And this could be yet another occupational hazard. For if she had a female colleague in the same office and if they would have met over mundane discussions or even casual gup shup ( chit chat) the lady colleague would have noticed and my friend would be saved from the upsetting chain of thoughts that proved to be quite a spoiler .

For she couldn't pick up the groceries back home. Now her mission was to make do with whatever is available in the house and change her dress, FIRST.

Over the phone the very next day when she narrated her heart wrenching story about her life going all bonkers with work, home and very little rest she had my full sympathy.

Although i too had some sequence of thoughts.

i decided not to give her any gyaan ( advice) and just listen to her and empathise.

My smaller sequence centered around just two questions as to what was more upsetting and i tried to answer them inwardly but of course i was biased.

1) Has life become so choc o block that we fail to notice how or what we are wearing?

          or

2) The fact that people would have noticed and joked about it?

i decided to feel strong about the first even when i know that we do get swayed, always, by ''What will people think!"

But i felt more alarmed with the corollary to the sequence as to how some of us have very little free time for ourselves to dress up in our sane sense or worse still even get hold of our own child in the super market.

There's this ad in TV perhaps of a mattress where the lady at the supermarket drags the wrong girl ignoring both the poor in strength and faint in sound struggle cries only to realize her mistake later when she hears the hiccuped cries of her own child seeking out her one and only ma.

The shot shows the horrified- at- her- own folly ma releasing the wrong baby girl abruptly and hurriedly going over to her own crying baby and picking her up first. The invisible male voice teasingly blurts out " Dekha theek sey naa sauney ka nateeja!"( Saw the result of not sleeping well!)

Something similar happened with me today and it is not strange that instead of being embarrassed i felt rather cute about my own self.

i can't seem to think otherwise because i am not hurried for time. Not anymore. Nor did i not sleep well.

And to top it all i was just downstairs. Home was just a few minutes of lift ride away and would take me less than five minutes to get all straightened up.

Stranger Lady serious in her looks as if she's about to divulge an incredible secret but with a smile on her lips : Suniye...aap ne dress ulta pehna hua hai.( listen...you are wearing the dress wrong side out.)

Maybe the smile was all about the famous Mirinda tagline jor ka jhatka dheerey sey lagey.( Big shock feels less shocking).

Or maybe she is a serious lady and was affectionately smiling at my cute little mistake.

Me: (smiling back at her but still preoccupied with my job juxtapositioning myself between a parked car and the shrub): Haan shaayad!... koi baat nahin ... abhi ghar jaakar badal loongi...( Yes maybe...doesn't matter...will go home now and change...)

The stranger lady walked off with a smile still on her lips and i continued with my occupation not the least bothered about the hanging lapel below the nape of the neck that was proclaiming my size to the whole world.

Maybe the person who tapped my back as i was busy clicking pictures with my cyber shot was a lady.

Or had a hunk of a guy approached me and with his suave manner uttered something similar God alone knows what my reaction would be.

One thing definitely would have happened then. i sure would be embarrassed. Not at all about wearing the wrong side out but definitely about my stylishly screaming L.

But the fact of the matter is that men fail to notice such small, easy to be overlooked apparent details. So far as details are concerned it's the very important statistics of the latent that interests them more. Isn't it?

Moreover i  think some man might approach you about the pen, the kerchief or even a bunch of keys asking you if it could belong to you. But so far as approaching you to tell you that you wore your T Shirt wrong side up, nah i don't think so.

Thus the other day i decided to stick with her no. 7 thought. i calmed my friend telling her that she's lucky she was the only woman there as the men would have failed to see the wrong side of her dead brown profusely printed shalwaar kameez  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shalwar_kameez.

She sounded okay then in her cheerio bye before she hung up with the words " Talk to you laters then, let me finish off my office work...".

i felt good about this sisterhood then and i feel good about the same sisterhood today.

Only thing i am disgusted as too why i failed to thank the stranger lady.

Ek Thank You toh banta thaa ! ( She sure did deserve a thank you)
Challo Koi Naeee jee ( popular local lingo for just chill...take it easy...not to worry...)

Sure i remember her face well and if i happen to see her again i will. 
This just reminds me of yet another one i happened to see in a poster. The words appealed to me and it goes like this:
Best Side of Life

life is double-sided;

There's a wrong side and a right side;

A sad side and a happy side.

There's a good side and a bad side;

A black side and a bright side.

So if things seem dark to you,

Just change your thoughts about.

Life will look quite different if you turn it best side out.

Image Courtesy: http://pravstalk.com/pravs-world-best-side-of-life/