Comedies of life!

I sometimes feel, Murphy wrote the law “if things can go wrong, they will” based on my life. Wherever Murphy is, he’d probably nod an “amen” if he hears my life story. In professional life or personal life, I have had this unique quirk of fate that, before any major surge of joy, I need to have a moment of absolute, utter and complete panic.

Like earlier this week, I was in this certain city, expected to go for one of the biggest meetings of the year. I arrive overnight, get a wake up call sufficiently early from the hotel reception, take a shower, breakfast, and then get ready for the meeting and…

Panic Attack 1: I pull my shirt from the hanger and while removing the collar button, the button breaks off. Now how the heck am I supposed to wear a Tie without buttoning up my collar!!! I pull up the sewing needle and thread from the hotel bathroom closet, poke my fingers 15 times, curse my luck 25 times and we finally have the collar button where its supposed to be..sewed up in red thread on a pristine white shirt…oh, what the heck!

Panic Attack 2: I put on my trousers and ramble up to my suit bag, search in one of the pockets for the belt, and voila I’ve forgotten it. Its 3000 miles away at home!!!! I mean, in all my bloody years of doing this job, I have never gone for a meeting without a suit trouser minus the belt.. Here I was staring at my half naked self in the mirror at a hotel room at 8 am in the morning, with my shirt on, tie in place and holding my pants in my hand! Ok, call the bell boy, get me a belt from the hotel shop, he brings 3 belts after 15 minutes, one of them a snake skin belt, another one a white leather belt and the third one looked like a cotton rope. We’re hyper-ventilating. I decide to just go for the meeting minus the belt.

If you think this is a random event in my life. Take another example, The year was 2005 and I was in Bahrain trying to close the biggest deal that I had ever closed in my life. One of the largest banks in that country was about to buy a software which it planned to roll out to 8 countries. I was presenting to an audience of over 25+ people. I had arrived along with the CEO of the company and had spent 2 weeks preparing for this meeting.

Everything had surprisingly gone well, pants in place, shirt in place, laptop is working fine, software is working fine, windows hasn’t crashed..And then I start my presentation. People who know me well professionally, know that when I present something, I can be quite thirsty and drink water often. I’m facing the audience and my boss who knew this habit of mine, quietly walked up from the back and kept a glass of water near my laptop. Like a ballet dancer, I do a pirouette and..CLUNK! THUD! CRASH! disaster..the glass of ice cold water tips on my laptop keypad. Keypad is floating in water..panic panic panic…the Bank IT guys rushes in…the audience and me watch in horror at the mess…we rush the laptop to the wash room, keep it under a hand drying fan, no good..laptop dies…The audience is surprisingly sympathetic..(in fact they took some special liking for us after that disaster, maybe we just seemed more human) ..we agree to postpone the session, but guess what finally emerges from this one...a month later ..I bag the deal!

God must be sitting and watching a sitcom comedy with my life, but he sure seems to be a sucker for happy endings, for he always ensures that every time I have a panic attack like that, I end up going and having a meeting of my life…

Well I guess, that's why they say "a hard beginning makes a good ending"

Happy Endings to y'all...