Note 1 - I am putting my life as stake even as I write these words since my mother does not know about this wonderful er epic, so I might actually get into (a lot) of trouble if and when she reads this. Three cheers for Kapoorni's never ending heroic deeds!
Note 2 - A lot of people ask me this, and yes, all these stories are true! I'm not exaggerating.
Note 3 - Mommy, if you're reading this, I'm totally kidding. This did not happen.
Okay, so a few days back I attended this badminton tournament, which was part of this annual sports meet thingie let's call it the AST (Annual Sports-Meet Thingie) as part of the school team (which does not actually exist). So anyway, there were five of us, three boys and two girls (talk about an unbalanced sex ratio) in addition to our Tennis Coach who was our escort since we do not have a badminton coach.
Or a badminton court.
But I digress.
Anyway, the Badminton AST was to be held at this school, let's call it The School. So The School is pretty far away from our school, and all six of us plus the driver could not fit into a car, so our coach sent two girls and two boys by car, and he followed us with another student on his bike. He told us to meet him by a coffeehouse, let's call it The Coffehouse (I rock at this naming game, do I not). He told us to wait there, and he would join us in a while.
Now let me just say I'm about the worst person to have along on a road trip of any sort. I am completely clueless when it comes to directions (or, well, anything) so I had no idea where The Coffehouse or The School were, I just listened to my music during the card ride and prayed that the other people would have some clue as to where we were headed. After listening to Bang Bang and All About The Bass approximately twenty five thousand times, we finally arrived in front of The Coffehouse. The car dropped us off and went. We assumed that our coach would be arriving shortly so we just stood outside The Coffehouse in the cold and waited for him.
He took his sweet time. We did everything to pass the minutes. We clicked selfies. We talked. We discussed the probability of winning or losing our upcoming matches. Eventually we got tired of the small talk and just looked around at the neighbouring shops. There were these small roadside shops everywhere selling the typical cheap, horrible quality, second hand goods. I was checking out this particular shop selling gloves and beanies and that sort of thing, when a particularly horrendous item caught my eye.
Okay, so you know those motorcycle gloves (I'm assuming that's what they are called...)? The fingerless ones? The ones that make one look like an ultimate badass? Yeah, those ones. I love them. Always have. I never had my own pair so I just improvised by cutting the finger part off the gloves I already had (something my mother truly loved...not).
So there I was, standing in the cold outside The Coffehouse waiting for the coach to show up, trying to focus on not letting my leg warmers freeze to my shins when I spotted the most lovely (ie ugly) pair of fingerless gloves (they were really ugly I don't know I loved them I don't know what's wrong with me I really don't). It was love at first sight. I asked the shopkeeper how much they were and he quoted a price. I have no experience in bargaining so I had no idea whether this was a reasonable price or not. I consulted my teammates who shook their heads in pity (perhaps at my taste) and got the price much down. They would've gotten it down even further had I not begun to already take the money out of my pocket. Anyway, so I paid and then realised that I had spent all the money I had on me, which had to make me survive for another six hours at least.
But it was worth it. The gloves were amazing.
Except for one thing. They reeked of leather. Not that yummy leather smell that comes from that really awesome shoe shop. No, it reeked of that bad leather smell. The smell that makes you hurl for an entire lifetime. I tried spraying every inch of the gloves with my perfume but it still lingered, so I decided to just the put the darn gloves in my bagpack and wash them the following evening (I think they're still in my bag).
Even after all this, our coach still hadn't shown up, so we decided to just sit inside the warm and toasty coffehouse and treat ourselves to maybe a coffee or two. We sat down, all four of us, and neatly assembled our respective rackets and kits, or math book, in my case. Everyone was doing their own thing. The boys were talking about...whatever it is that boys talk about, and my fellow teammate was listening to her songs, while I was doing maths. I was politely waiting for one of them to order something, since
1) I was famished
2) I didn't have money on me
3) We would be there a long time and The Coffehouse would throw us out if we didn't order anything soon.
I finally addressed the elephant in the room.
"Guys, are we going to order anything or not?"
They looked at me in a quizzical manner. Long story short, I was the only person who had brought along any money, apart from the other boy, who was with our coach. I had spent it all, however, on a pair of leather-reeking gloves, as you well know, hence meaning that none of us had any money.
The minutes passed.
One of the waiters eventually, subtly, slipped a menu on our table.
Wow, subtle as a gun.
I remembered that I did have a ten rupee note in my pocket, and one of the boys had four one rupee coins. Put together, we had fourteen rupees (I'll hold on while you get the calculator to check my math).
We got really excited, and checked the menu. Doughnuts, coffee, ice cream, sundaes, juices, sandwiches..out of our budget. The cookies were fifteen rupees. So close, yet so far. We did spot one thing, however, that was totally in our budget, but it seemed a little impractical to order the add on cheese dip. We were toying with the idea of maybe ordering it, when thankfully the other boy, ie the Boy With The Money finally arrived, and we immediately tackled him and made him order nachos for us.
We looked the waiter straight in the eye as we ordered, as if to say What if we sat here for forty minutes clicking pictures and not ordering anything, we finally did order something, stop judging us, we will tip you!!!!!!!!!
I never thought a box of nachos could regain my lost dignity.
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