In plain sight

And Bam! It was gone. There was definitely something that he had just wanted to say, but it just, poof. Oh never mind He had a vague sense that it was nothing that important, but something he had said before. A curious sense of deja vu and feeling mentally inept made him feel strangely queasy, the kind of feeling you have when you burp after having had one too many bread pakoras and milk.

He liked his things ordered. Books arranged height-wise on the shelf right side up, eggs double fried, forks and spoons separate, and the team he supported to win. The last one is probably one of the last vestiges of normalcy that he clings on to. It especially irked him when the words that were supposed to be hyphenated were not. He wondered right now if that was what was bothering him. Some word he had read in the paper, and wanted to tell his mom, not so much tell as whine about what a downward dip the papers were taking. His mom was sitting opposite, it had been quite a while since her last visit. She was sipping her tea, and he had a vague sense that she was prattling the same old happy routine, almost twenty eight, fair girl, they will accept him for whatever he is, whatever that is supposed to mean. Yak yak and more yak was all that filtered past his membranes. A game was on, and although he had turned on the volume not too subtly, yak yak and more yak of the commentator was all that filtered past his mom's membrane. Well, the apple doesn't fall far.

It was getting too much, like playing Crazy Cabbie on Level 29.

"... and Podolski passes... Podolski!"

"...so would you come for lunch with me next Sunday to Mrs. Mukherjee's?"

"...had they writtem tshirts in the paper today...oh the horror!"

"... Tuku! Are you listening? Sometimes na..."

and then silence. Oh! the relief. He knew what Douglas Adams must have felt like when he realised that it was 42. It was there in front him all the time. Big, brown and circular. And it was too late now. It was all dried up. This was going to need the special solution, and a lot of it. He felt cold all over. Meanwhile his mom kept on with her happy monologue, totally oblivious to his horror and the fact that she had forgotten to keep her tea-cup on the coaster. Again.