Sunday, October 24, 2010

A friend in need

I put the gear lever on neutral and slowly pulled over by the side of the road. I glanced at the side. My wife looked up at me. Her eyes seemed to say, "I told you so". She did not say anything though, and went back to review the vacation photos on her new smart phone.
I asked, "How are you feeling now?"
She replied sportingly, that she is all right. Her face told me a different story.
We were returning from a beach vacation. It was really late when we started; I wanted to drive by the beach at moonlight. Now, five hours later, we were almost lost, in the jungle, and the fuel tank almost nearing empty. To the make matter worse, she had a throbbing pain in the stomach and we had forgot to pack her medicines.
I shut down the engine, and immediately we were engulfed by an eerie silence. I looked at the illuminated dial of the smart phone. It said 3:15 AM in the morning. The moon has almost set now, but still the last rays falling on the trees created a cris-cross pattern on the road. It was all very beautiful.
I should have listened to her, I thought. We found out that the medicine was missing three hours ago, when her pain first started. She asked me to go back, but I knew there was a big town with an overnight medicine shop on the way, and had decided to continue. Somehow we have completely missed the town, and landed ourselves in this mess.
My indecisiveness made me open the door and step out. I slammed the door in frustration. The noise disturbed some of the residents in the jungle. The birds started protesting; I have woken them up. A jackal howled in a distance.
The sounds woke my son up, who was sleeping in the back-seat. He rubbed his eyes and asked in a sleepy voice: "Daddy where are we?"
To this quickly explained him the situation. He suddenly became very alert, and I seemed to see a mischievous smile on his face.
"Daddy, if I get you out of this mess, will you allow me to get a smart phone for myself?"
I made a feeble attempt to negotiate, but I knew he had me, so after minor protests I allowed him to take charge of the situation.
"Have you tried the GPS feature on your smart phone?", he asked.
"Well no, but I am on the correct route, just missed the town with the overnight medicine shop".
"Have you tried looking up the medicine shop in your phone? You know that your GPS contains data for over 2 lakh points of interest all over India, and it can guide you to your chosen point of interest?"
All of you have now guessed the happy ending. My wife got her medicine, my son his new smart phone, and myself a small hole in the pocket. In case you are still curious what did my son buy, you can look it up here. Tata Indicom One touch phone

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