Hail Mr.Murphy

If anything can go wrong it will - quoted Mr.Murphy. I guess he was one deerkadarisi who foresaw the need for such a quote considering the imminent arrival of a poor species going by the name Gils. Athennamo therila enna maayamo puriala...if something goes issue free or trouble free i feel awkward and nervous. Unless something goofs up or goes amazingly wrong, it is never satisfying. Right from school days, when we have to queue up for picking up our lab exam experiment questions, the entire class would be eagerly waiting for me to pick the first paper. For they knew for sure that the magic hands of mine would pick the most atrocious of all the questions :(  Such had been my luck that it had become a legendary topic of discussion and a recent stint at the consulate was another addition to that legend's mystique.

The day of the visa interview dawned bright and shine and was surprisingly issue free. It scared the rat out of me when i arrived for the interview 45 mins in advance, a situation that is rarer than Indian cricket team's win in Australia. I got shooed in through the pre-screening rounds and till the time my turn came at the counter for document examination i was all fidgety and nervous, looking out for the tell tale signs of approaching storm. The moment i stepped towards the counter, to my glee and every ones horror, the display board, which was about to roll in my token number, threw up an unique constraint error. I was satisfied that the dice had begun to roll. The system automatically restarted and the guy at the counter took in my docs for review. I had 5 photos pinned in for each section where it was requested. Even though all of them were copies of the same pic taken a few days earlier, i somehow had managed to look different on each of them, atleast thats what that counter guy must've thought i guess. He felt the white background and the flash on my specs made my eyes look different than in person and wanted me to take a fresh photo. I went down the snake on the ladders game to the starting point and stood in queue to take my pic as per the specifications. After an hours ordeal my turn at the counter came. And no prize for guessing, the system threw the same error again, the moment i stepped in. Now the counter guy, having been familiar with me, took in my docs again, despite the error. Suddenly he was muttering and banging the monitor and without realising that the mike was ON he called up his colleague from the next counter. She came and swore and called up the person from the third counter. Everyone else who had came for the interview, who had already started giving me evil eyes and bad words in mind voice for delaying them and having already seen that the system crashes every i go near the counter, by now had a confirmed belief that i am part of some banned outfit or a terrorist in disguise. By this time the counter people had called their helpdesk and then only realised that the mike was ON and switched it off in a hurry. After a lot of consult and discussion, my counter guy told me that, by mistake he had passed my entry twice that which had caused a lock on my account in their system. And because of that my number wouldnt be displayed at the next building, where the actual interview was to happen. There were close to 300 people at that time and each one were called only by their numbers. And there were more than a dozen counters. Even with your number displaying it would be tough to find out where we had to go for our interview. I asked him the same question for which he assured it would be taken care of. By the time i was walking to the next building, half the crowd had decided that, it would be the last of me as a free person and my next flight, if at all, would only be to Guantanamo bay. I made my sojourn with the happy thought that things are finally moving in the right direction and nothing more is left to go wrong. That confidence gave me the peace to answer the interview well and the result came out positive.

It may not have been the best result for me personally or something that i would care a lot about. But it sure has set the wheels of my life on a different course altogether.