Step out of the Country

What do you do when people all around you keep having their movie moments and yours is just evading you? Your friend just had a bad day and, surprise surprise, someone bumped her on the stairwell and she drops all her paper and, whoop, what do you know, it’s a cute perpetrator very smilingly helping her pick up her stuff. When your other friend had THE perfect kiss in the rain?

And all that happens to you is, you perspire not 2 minutes after you’ve stepped out of the shower and wonder why you had one anyway?

Well, you make your own movie magic happen, of course. Even though, on the day of my departure, or rather the few hours that led up to it, I had to go to an important meeting, submit documents for a Canadian VISA for next month, pack clothes, go to a cousin’s birthday party, oh and did I mention ….. I didn’t even have LEAVE sanctioned from work?? And the icing on the cake, I wasn’t sure I even had a confirmed seat on the flight.

I laughed hysterically at the situation. In my head, not out loud, that would be weird.

Before I knew it, I was en route New York for 2 days. It sounded ridiculous to everyone, India to New York for only 2 days. But you know what? I felt precisely like I’d rubbed some Maaza bottle and told some very Alphonso-looking genie that I’ve had it enough with this heat and this wearing of modest garments and he’d packaged me off for just enough time for my skin and hair to be happy and smiley again and for me to plonk myself in Candy Paradise. And of course, to empty my wallet of all contents whatsoever.

So what did I do in New York? Well, I’d been there before so I didn’t waste time sight seeing. When I even THOUGHT the word ‘jet lag’ and I had to act like it was some horribly sordid thing, linked to Nazism and Tundra winter and voodoo and what-not.

So, besides shopping EVERYWHERE and eating about as much steak as…well…. Let’s just say I consumed a cow, maybe, the first thing I did was to terrorize the neighborhood.

No, really. I went to FAO Shwarz and tried out this really cool giant interactive piano, that, quite evidently, only tiny kids did. In my pictures, I look like the Empire State building  and the tots look like…you know… tot cottages. I could almost caption it, “ Hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wives”.

Then, in an unexpected turn of events (yes, I swear it was in no way pre-planned although I’d like to say it was and be all gangstah), I somehow managed to shoplift….. without even knowing that that’s what I did. This was pointed out to me by a robust & thoroughly entertained black girl who instantly befriended me on that curbside whilst commending me on my ‘Shoplifting skills’, as it were.

She then whisked me away to a beauty training school where she gave me what happened to be, my first haircut out of India, and her first hair cut…on….an actual living, breathing human being. (The mannequins in that school are joltingly revolting to look at). This girl was also a natural at ‘Yo Momma’ jokes.

Seemingly undaunted by the prospect of the Law and being detained in another country, I proceeded to sneakily take pictures of a hobo, a dustbin and a footpath, as specifically requested by my strange friend in India whom I love tremendously. I went one up. I also got a picture of a hobo AND a dustbin. So bad ass.

Now, when I visited the Forever 21 fitting rooms I almost balked to see, in prominent black marker, the door adorned with ‘Haram!’ and ‘Muslimmen.com’. For a second, I thought I was back in India. I laughed. Seems we generously spread our misdemeanor, ceaselessly, everywhere.

But, no, India even followed me to the steak house! There I am, enjoying my succulent steak, when I unmistakably hear the strains of 1940’s Bollywood music from the speakers. Very amused, I ask the Irishman at the counter if what I was hearing was right. He says, enthused, “Oh yeah yeah, I was watchin’ this Heineken ad once. Beeer…… ya know, Heineken, yeah…. An’ I googled the soundtrack & it seems to be this forgotten Hindi guy and I really liked his shit so I downloaded all of it off iTunes.”

Well, what can I say?