The Murphy clan is in love with me...Cont'd

I involuntarily gulped a little. But with fake pride writ large on my face, anyway went ahead to get my drink from the machine. And a second later, I stare in wide eyed amazement when I find that the paper cup wouldn’t budge from its place. It was stuck to the cup-holder! And the cup is damn hot! 90 °C says the machine. So, I yank it a little this way and that in an attempt to loosen the vice-like grip of the holder from the cup rim. But the more I yanked, the more the Murphy clan rocked! And before I knew it, I had somehow managed to squeeze the paper cup, and its erstwhile contents were now lying in a neat little puddle on the floor by my foot.

By then I wanted to kick that damned vending machine, but I don’t have the strength in me to lift my foot to bestow this little act of annoyance on it. I am no management expert or war general, but I do know that the battle is still on, and I just cannot squander my position however weak that might be.

"You just wait and watch, Mr. Murphy,” I muster all my courage to speak in my best smart-ass tone, "You are sure as hell gonna regret paying me a visit.”

“Oooh, a feisty little thing,” retorts Murphy, “But peeps, don’t I always win my battles, more so against feisty creatures?”

“Yes, yes, yes. Woof, woof, woof.” That was the Murphy clan cheering from the sidelines.

What if I don’t have any supporters; I am all I need, says a voice inside me. And so, I roll up my sleeves, and fish out some more money to get myself that precious drink now. So this time around, the coins fall down with a clink, the cup is dismembered from the gorges of the machine, and the beverage pours down with a sound that is now music to my ears. I gingerly open the flip door, and gently pry the cup out of the holder. Yippee do! I finally have my Hot Choco in my hands!!

“Uh-oh, Mr. Murphy! Care to join me for a drink? The drink is on me for sure; you were such a good sport after all.”

Silence. I hear neither Murphy nor the Yes-Woof chorus.

“Oh! Mr. Murphy. Now don’t be such a grouse. Come say congratulations to me. How many people beat you in your own game? You gotta acknowledge that.”

Still silence.

Ah, well! “Good riddance,” I think, and decide to enjoy the drink for which I fought so hard. “Expensive drink, this one,” I mutter to myself, and oh-so-slowly take a swig out of the cup.

What transpired next is best censored from this blog, because I managed to curse myself in some rather unpleasant words. Instead of the hot-choco that I craved, I now was in possession of a cup of piping hot coffee – black, bitter and strong! Aided by Murphy, I must have pressed the wrong button. And as I stood there contemplating what to do with that cup of coffee, I am sure I saw the Murphy clan gliding across the hall in a neat little line on their tip-toes, the perfect image of grace and style, with Murphy at the head, and Tommy at the end.

“Boy! We do a mean ballet or what!” cackles Murphy.

But his peeps I am sure don’t believe in rhetorical questions, and as is their wont, reply in the affirmative, “Yes, yes, yes. Woof, woof, woof.”

The Murphy clan is in love with me

Yes, you are reading it right; the Murphy clan is in love with me. Now it is quite one thing to have Murphy pop-up out of nowhere in your mind’s eye and gleefully chuckle, “Ahoy! Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” And I guess it is also quite normal with some people, when Murphy, depending on the level of things going wrong, would do a merry jig, a pirouette, and even a yippe-do somersault, if he thought you were the new–age poster boy/girl of his famous Law. But having the whole of his clan drop in to visit me on the same day, within a matter of few minutes, and all of them doing a perfectly synchronized ballet dance to celebrate *the* Murphy’s law taking place in such style, is altogether another thing. I am sure their synchronized ballet would have put the best of Russian ballerinas to shame. This was after all a celebratory dance. And as they say, when you are happy inside, it shows in whatever you do.

Right. So this is how the Murphy clan decided to descend upon me. Happened a few days ago. I was reeling with a bad case of head-ache, and so decided to check my office kitchen for some chocolate powder to make myself a cup of hot choco drink. But turned out that we only had coffee there. I am not a big fan of coffee. If it were a mug of Mom-made-Bru-coffee, I would have had a few sips of that. But this was just black coffee – strong , bitter and dark. I retraced my steps, rubbing my index finger and thumb on my temple, mumbling something to myself. Somehow I then find myself in front of the vending machine for my imminently-essential dose of chocolate. The following is what transpired there upon:

In my inebriated state of mind, I had forgotten to bring my wallet along, and now had to make do with whatever little change that I had on me. So I insert two 100 Won coins into the machine, and press on the ‘HOT CHOCO’ slot and wait to lay my hands on my elixir of life. But quite unbeknownst to me, Murphy was getting ready to pay me a visit in all his grand regalia – pomp and show. I imagine him doing a merry “Ho, Ho, Ho” ala Santa Claus, as soon as I put in my coins into the machine, and then holler to his family,

“Hey, Mom, Pop, Bro, Sis, Tommy...comeon you all. Let’s go drive this woman up the wall.”

And then this is what they would have replied,

“Yes, yes, yes. Woof, woof, woof.”

So I am waiting for the paper cup to drop down and the hot choco to pour into it for some 30 seconds now. Now nine times out of ten, I am a patient person. But this just happened to be the tenth instance, so I did what I could do best with a throbbing headache - I banged on the vending machine. With all my might. It was only a few seconds later that I realised that it wasn’t a test of might to being with. So I mutter something not so nice under my breath, and proceed to dig out some more coins from my pocket.

This is where, Murphy would have remarked with a smirk on his face,

“Goodie, good. Having fun, peeps?”

And the peeps in question would have responded,

“Yes, yes, yes. Woof, woof, woof.”

So I see that I have quite some amount of change on me, and proceed to insert another two 100 Won coins into the machine, after it shamelessly swallowed the earlier two without as much as a burp. And voila! As soon as the second coin fell down with that characteristic ‘clink’ I hear my eagerly awaited hot choco oozing out.

“Ha! Not so soon, my darling girl,” Murphy must have said at that instant. Because when I open that flip door to retrieve my drink, I see with my eyes wide open that the liquid is actually pouring straight down into the machine’s sink. By some stroke of convoluted workmanship, there was no paper cup released to hold this much-craved and much-needed drink, now going waste. The best thing for me to do at that time was to sigh, and I did just that. And since I do things the best I can, I sighed a little longer than would have been necessary, as though to will the vending machine into a serious bout of ignominy at that deed of its.

But no such luck, for I could distinctly hear Murphy say to his clan now,

“Yay, peeps! Do we rock or what?”

And I swear I heard the over-enthusiastic clan reply in unison,

“Yes, yes, yes. Woof, woof, woof.”

But now with an open battle waging between me and the Murphy clan, I could not accept defeat like a coward, head ache or no headache. I had to uphold the respectability of my ancestors. What was a mere headache after all in the face of the pride of my forefathers? I couldn’t afford to let them down, could I?

So now I decide to make myself 200 Won poorer, and do the coin insertion act on auto-pilot. I suspect I also sent up a prayer to request God to give me the strength to fight this Murphy clan. And wonder of wonders…the prayer seemed to be working. I hear the paper cup drop down, and then the brown liquid flow down into it.
“Ha! The game is over you Murphys,” I snort to them with all the disdain I could muster.
But alas! Murphy is a seasoned pro.

“What say, peeps? Shall I make her eat her words back, this very instant?”

I hear him retort. And yeah, you know by now what the peeps would have eagerly said. Yes, they all went,

“Yes, yes, yes. Woof, woof, woof.”

... To be continued.

It's all in the head

Me: He still hasn’t replied to my e-mail.

The voice in my head: Hah! He cannot not afford to reply. Heard of something called patience?

Me: No, he is not a doctor. He doesn’t have to deal with patients. He sure has plenty of time on his hand.

TVIMH: Aww, honey! That wasn’t funny in the least. If anything, it was bleah.

Me: Thanks. You are being very helpful.

TVIMH: Oh, I aim to help you. And you know that dear, don’t you?

Me: I am on the verge of an anxiety attack, goddamnit! And this is the kind of support I get from you, my inner voice? Ah! Woe is me!

TVIMH: Tell you what, you make a very bad drama queen. Period.

Me: Huh? Did you by any chance jump ship? You traitor, you!

TVIMH: You could never make me do that. Not even if you make a bigger fool of yourself than you have managed to accomplish till date.

Me: Yeah, right! What would I be without you?

TVIMH: Lost.

Me: Don’t you ever get tired of listening to yourself? I mean, I could very well do without you. It sure must be stifling in there, right? Why don’t you take a break or something? That would do both of us a great deal of good.

TVIMH: I am afraid not. You see, when God made you, he saw that there was something amiss inside you. That was when he sent me to be with you with a note that said,

“An acute case of foot-in-the-mouth-itis. Guard her.”

Me: Oh, so I am a defective piece. Why, thanks. That is a welcome news.

TVIMH: I am not quite finished about that note. The post script in God’s very own handwriting on that scroll read:

“Being a pachyderm ain’t bad. Teach her that.”

Me: Right! So how are we doing on ‘Being a Pachyderm 101’.

TVIMH: Terrible! A hundred different kinds of terrible. You gotta send that sensitive side of yours on a hike. Seriously!

Me: Yeah, with you around, I don’t need anything or anyone else. Not even S!

TVIMH: So this S is the guy who hasn’t responded to your mail. He is the one who is responsible for you babbling to no one in particular. He is the one who is making you refresh your gmail inbox every other minute. Am I right?

Me: Um-yeah. But my behavior is beside the point. The point here is – why hasn’t he responded yet to my e-mail after more than 24 hours. 28 hours and 12 minutes to be precise.

TVIMH: The seconds don’t count, I see.

Me: Are you by any chance on a mission to infuriate me?

TVIMH: Actually not. I am only trying to make you see the big picture.

Me: Oh, yeah? And that is?

TVIMH: Now, that’s a good girl. So how long is it since you know this S guy?

Me: 9 days.

TVIMH: That is a lot of time to get anxious about the non-receipt of a mail from someone, huh? I must be really stone-age.

Me: It is not the amount of time that matters. The thing is I felt a kind of connection with him when I saw his profile first.

TVIMH: By Jove, that must have been some super strong connection for you to feel traversing the Pacific between the two of you. Remember the time when you felt a similar oh-so-strong connection with David Sedaris’ ‘I Talk Pretty One Day’, and decided that you must have the book right then. And when you finally did get your hands on a copy of that, that connection was nowhere to be seen. And I think you still haven’t gone past a few pages on that book.

Me: Are you out of your mind? You are comparing apples and oranges here. That was a book, and he is a living being, for God’s sake.

TVIMH: Ah! I thought I was being rather just given that your excitement for the book was because you thought you had found a kindred soul who was in the same category as you – socially inept. Gauche. And that I thought was the best kind of connection one could have, after your recent fiasco.

Me: What do you call someone with an elephantine memory, and with the ability to impart clarity as though touched by the hand of God?

TVIMH: Umm, I suppose you could call her ‘The voice in my head’ or ‘My inner voice’. Either way, it’s fine. I don’t crave social recognition, you see. The only thing I care about is whether you are living to your highest right. And when you stray, you can rest assured woman, that I will make you take note of my presence and set you on the right path.

Me: Have I ever told you that I love you?

TVIMH: Not quite as often as I would have liked to hear.

Me: Right! So let’s maintain the status quo for a little while more. I am a stiff-upper-lipped-fiercely-independent woman after all. Gotta be true to myself. Wouldn’t want you to be enraged if I do anything that is so unlike me.

TVIMH: Hah! Sure, I can live with the status quo.

Me: So let me attend to my work now, and I promise I won’t check my gmail again for the day.

TVIMH: Now, that is music to my ears. Let me catch up on some sleep now. You sure do keep me busy. Toodles.