LOCKED OUT!!!

This happened a few days ago on a Saturday. I was out learning Basketball with my cousin Amri (actually, she’s teaching me the game) in the evening and after the game (technically it wasn’t a game, it was just me running around the basketball court while simultaneously dribbling the ball and trying to aim at the basket, pathetically I might add and trying to score. Score in the real sense of scoring a point, not the other sense, PERV!!!) we started back home on her Scooty. As luck would have it, just about a kilometer away from the house the engine spluttered to a stop. Try as we might we could not get it to start again cuz the geniuses that we are, we had forgotten to take a look at the fuel tank before starting off like Roadies. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s a show on MTV where a bunch of fools (well not bigger fools than us seeing as they have the sense to check their fuel before taking off) go on a journey and perform tasks for money and immunity. So each of us took turns to push the scooty till the nearest Petrol station only to find to our chagrin that because of power failure, we would not be getting any fuel for at least another hour. So it was another round pushing the vehicle home, thankfully it was not all that great a distance.

It was almost dark when we got home and since no one else was home apart from us we decided to go upstairs to the terrace next to our room and stargaze. I have been interested in the heavens (I mean the night sky) since my high school and I know quite a little about the constellations (now I am bragging, I only know to spot 2-3 constellations, namely Orion, Canis major, the great bear, the scorpion etc), so I decided to educate my lil sister bout them.

So up we went, bolting the main door from within (mind you, I say bolting, not locking) to the open terrace. The first constellation was the Orion or Great Hunter as he’s called, as it’s the easiest to spot because of the three stars forming his famous belt. It took some time for Amri to get the complete constellation (help came n the form of his shoulder, the red star Betelgeuse, making it easier) since it was her first date with the Hunter. Next was Canis Major, which lies next to Orion. This again is easy to spot because the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius is a part of this 5 star constellation and also because it has a distinctive inverted Y or lambda shape. Before I knew, I was telling her about the few Indian and Greek mythologies that I had heard about or read and the time just flew.

It was time to get back into the house and surprise, surprise!! We had conveniently locked ourselves out when we slid the glass door a little too hard and the automatic lock had slid back in place!! The catch, no one else is home apart from the two of us and we lock ourselves out. As if that was not enough, my aunt reached home the exact minute and started ringing the bell. We started yelling at the top of our voice to let her know that we were locked out and it would take some time to sort the whole thing out. It took a lot longer(round about 20 mins) since the two of us had to calm down completely, as we were laughing hysterically at our own foolish predicament, when my aunt heard our laughter she told us to get our act together and get inside somehow. I tried climbing over the parapet and jumping down into the balcony below but gave up on the idea soon as there were no handholds or footholds for any grip and one slip, I would either land on the Mangalore tiles of the balcony roof or 6 floors on the ground, neither of which was a very comforting thought.

The last option left was to break down the sliding glass doors, and very frankly I was not all that happy to do that. So, to make sure that we had tried everything else possible before breaking the door down we started tugging hard at the door away from the frame. As were just about to give up, Viola!! The lock released with a snap and the door slid open. We heaved a sigh of relief, not about getting back in but for the fact that neither the main door nor the door upstairs had to be broken down. I learnt my lesson not to bolt the main door when I was home alone but rather lock it so that even in such situations it’s easier to unlock a door than having to break it down or sawing it off the frame.

Some day that turned out to be, first out of fuel, then out of breath for having had to push the vehicle and then finally locking ourselves out!! But all Amri and me did was laugh about it whole-heartedly, since both of us agree on the fact that it’s these silly goof-ups that make the journey called LIFE a little more fun and interesting.