The Traumatic Effects Of Dumbness

Well if there’s one thing that I cannot stand – it is dumbness! Actually, of all the things I cannot stand, dumbness by far ranks the highest. Except of course when it happens to be my own and I am forced to put up with it. See I’m no masochist, and any bodily harm that befalls me, you can be rest assured was not self inflicted. So you can imagine what torture it was for me to have to spend one month in Pune with a roommate who was there to do her “Am Bee A”! No no, don’t get me wrong...I really did not have any problem with her accent. I spoke very flawed Hindi myself, so I thought that between the both of us we made a rather interesting hash of both languages. But have you ever had that feeling... Well the best way to describe it really, is the way Joey from FRIENDS does. “Every time I see her, I want to rip my arm out just so I have something to throw at her.” That best describes my emotions! And we actually lived in the same room!

See the first time I felt like that, was on my third day of staying there. She was doing her laundry, and I was trying to drown my sorrows in Wodehouse. Suddenly she came running into the room screaming that the washing machine was not working, and there was a leak. I went to investigate. The thing was if the machine really was broken, I would have to chip in for the repairs, and trust me, if you’re living off your parents, but in a strange city, you do become a tad penny-wise. The roommate (and here I use roommate as a replacement for several other words that I think would be too rude to use) had not bothered to put the light on in the passageway where the machine was kept. Fear not, I knew that I had in fact reached the washing machine, (she had yanked the plug out owing to the supposed leak, so there was no sound to follow) when I stubbed my toe against it. I think I muttered “Bugger the machine!” under my breath. The curse was directed entirely at the infernal machine itself! But my roommate thought otherwise.
“You are saying to me foul language!” she asked in an angry tone. I didn’t really think that it was worth an explanation. There was a crisis on hand (or so I was lead to believe) and I had no time for all of that garb. So instead I said something to the effect of “No no! What I said was the buzzer on the machine...”
It worked. She kept silent. I fumbled in the dark for the light switch. When the lights came on, I saw what the matter was. That was when that feeling first took a hold of me. I stood there arms akimbo, looking first at the washing machine, and then at my roommate, who refused to do anything other than look at me expectantly and blink with the rapidity of one of those Japanese animated characters. It did not help the situation at all. I pointed at the knob on the machine. Still no response. See she had selected “drain”, and had been busy pouring buckets of water into the tub to fill it. It took all my will power to keep calm. I then explained to her what she had done in a surprisingly calm voice. She proceeded to guffaw loudly and whack me on the back. Not the best thing to have done. But I said nothing. I even forced a weak smile, and went back to my Wodehouse.

Later that night two more things annoyed the hell out of me. They were caused by her. First she asked me whether there was a beach in Bangalore. The second was when I went to take a shower later that night and found that there was no water left thanks to her “drain and fill” technique.
How I managed to come away from Pune with neither arm being used to launch an aerial attack is a miracle.

Coming soon (hopefully): More things that make me wonder how I left Pune without committing murder.

-Vaishali