F*CK! A series of unfortunate events.

Have you ever had one of those days when everything had to be just right but things ran in the exact opposite direction?

If you relate with me, read. We are all profane when the time deserves it, and this episode definitely did.

I had been working relentlessly on a presentation for a month. With one more day to go, I was still at work at 10:00 p.m. I was confident nothing could possibly go wrong. I had run through every little detail. I had double-checked all the figures and statistics. The infographics were looking good. I had backed up the file in two different formats. My boss had skimmed through the presentation just before he could leave office. He had asked me to change a few details based on the latest update he had received.

While I sat in my chair looking at the result of efforts, sweat and blood put into my presentation, for the first time in an entire month I was confident this would go well. I had rehearsed through the list of FAQ. I was beyond confident of my promotion post this presentation. I had slightly wandered away in my thoughts whilst the animation kept working through my presentation. 

It was a file heavy on data. I was aware of every single hyperlink that was linked to the words. I had everything under control. My mom had already reached out to me twice asking me to come home. I responded tired,' I'll leave in half an hour Ma.' I knew I had to catch up on some beauty sleep and feel fresh the next day. I looked at my watch, it was 10:45 p.m. I hurriedly packed my bags to leave. I left my office feeling amazing and confident about the next day.

I twisted and turned in my bed unable to sleep. I was dreaming about how things will change for me after my promotion. The clock struck 12:00. That was my cue to sleep. I forced myself to sleep after setting an alarm to wake up at 06:00 a.m.

Six hours later, my alarm blazed through the room. I woke up feeling uneasy. I blamed it on the acidic stomach catalysed by skipping dinner the previous night. I knew what exactly I had to wear to work that day. My gut goes by anything in black. I picked a black cotton kurta, ironed out the creases and headed to take a shower. Just as I was about to enter the shower, my phone rang. It was my mom. She wanted me to have breakfast with her. I happily agreed to know my acidic stomach could use some food. Having showered, and dressed, I knew I looked my best self. I had even picked out a mask to match my attire. I mentally checked off "looking good" from my checklist for the day. I checked my bag for my bunch of keys, wallet and the hard disk on which I had the master copy of the presentation. All set! With a tiny grin, I called Maa to confirm with her about breakfast. I drove to her place. Quickly grabbed a bite or two of the piping hot idlis she'd made. Hugged her a bye and left. I was leaving half an hour sooner than usual.

I took the stairs thinking I could pump some additional endorphins into my body. I blasted my favourite playlist through my Bluetooth earpiece.

As I descended down, at about the first floor, my bag's strap snapped.

"F*CK!", I muttered under the mask.

I took the elevator on the nearest floor landing and went back to my mom's place. I rushed through the door when I bumped into my grandmother. Worried, she asked me, 'Why are you back? Did you forget something? Do you want me to call mom?' and the questions wouldn't stop. Concern grows exponentially with old age. I tried hard not to lose my calm at her, with all the questions she bombarded me with. I told her I was looking for a spare bag to carry to work and rushed into my good old room. Found a spare, but this wouldn't go with the outfit, and it looked the least bit professional. I shifted the content from one bag to the other and left in a hurry.

This time, I took the elevator instead of the stairs as I lost out on precious fifteen minutes. Quickly sat down in my car and sped away on my usual route to work. The inconvenience of Bangalore traffic comes knocking at your door, on the days you dread it the most. BWSSB was digging up the one road they had spared and efficiently managed to disrupt the extra 15 minutes I had with me. I reached work on time, got my usual parking spot. I let out a sigh of relief, at least one thing was as usual.

As I stepped out of my car and took a whiff of the polluted air around me, I was still happy about my presentation, promotion and by now you get the jazz of what I'm talking about. 

I wished the security guard good morning and was about to enter the building, a colleague called out to me asking me to wait for him. As I walked towards him,  a huge blob of bird poo landed on the sleeve of my kurta. 

'Fuuuuuu***CK!!!', this time I was louder than I'd expected to be. Shit! Shit! Shit! It was literally SHIT on my kurta.

I ignored my colleague and rushed to the washroom on the ground floor. Tried rubbing it off with a tissue first. To make things worse, I wore a black kurta remember. After about twenty minutes of trying to wash off the poo, I reached the 13th floor of my office. 

Of what was supposed to be a perfect morning, I was now smelling like bird poo and I had enough crumbs of tissue on my kurta to be noticed. I sprayed away my sorrow at this point in time with a cheap-ass deodorant I had bought.

Cleared my head out, drowned myself in a cup of hot coffee and settled on my chair to review my presentation. Two minutes into looking for the Hard disk, I realised, I had accidentally left my hard disk out on my bed while changing bags.

'Fu********cccccck!' I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, as my body turned warmer with anger.

"When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." - Paulo Coelho

At this moment the universe clearly had different plans for me.

The rest of the day, as you might have guessed by now, was totally F’ed up. 

1. I hit my pinky toe to the edge of a cabinet.

2. I had a food stain on my kurta from the depressing lunch I ate at the canteen. This was in addition to the tissue crumbs.

3.  I lost my lucky pen and didn't find it.

4. I had a presentation with me without the updated figures and statistics.

5. The laser pointer just wouldn't work during my presentation. 

6. Head Office decided to remotely view my presentation from the comforts of their screens.

7. I sneezed and coughed by the end of the day. No, it was not Covid, it was a regular flu.

8. My boss thought I wasn't confident enough and took over my presentation mid-way,

and a hundred other things which could've been fine had to just go wrong on that very day.

'F*CK my life!' I thought to myself and left work disappointed and agitated.

But you know what, it's ok. It's ok to have a bad day. It's ok to lose out on a promotion. You will appreciate things better only when you know how bad they can go. For all I care, I don't give a 'F*CK' about the universe right now. Cheers! 😎

#not_a_real_life_incident

#BlogchatterA2Z