Kash aisa hota...par hua kuch yun

As I was working on a Lotus Notes issue at work, something snapped. "Oh, its just my cuff button that has become undone"... or so I thought. "Oh No, my button actually fell off" Panic Attack!! I took the button and put it in my pocket, knowing very well that now my next job will be to find someone who can stitch it back. I know I know, most people will roll their eyes and maybe say, "...that's so damn easy". Oh Well, this needs a bit of history...


**Flashback with a very weird background score**

I belong to an Army background with my Dad, Grandpa, Uncles, Aunts, all following the Army tradition. Being in Army has its advantages and disadvantages but we will start with advantages that turned out to be my disadvantages later in life. We had a "Helper" for almost everything throughout my Army life. There was this main Helper, who would do all the house chores including getting groceries and canteen ka samaan. There there was a cook who would come occasionally for parties, there was a driver for our jeeps and jongas, there was a dhobi for washing and pressing all the clothes and believe it or not there was also shoe-polish guy who would come to polish Dad's shoes (as in Army shoes tells a lot about person's rank and all, its almost a izzat-ka-sawaal). Rest of the things were taken care by Ma. Anyways, the point is that by the time I graduated from school, I had hardly done any chore myself. Now you would say, "that's not a very nice thing...blah blah" but that's how it was.

After my 12th grade in Dehradoon, I got admission in Engineering college in Karnataka and moved to the hostel and that's where the sayapa (problems in Punjabi) started. My expectations were very low. Kash aisa hota, if someone could wake me up at 6 am with a glass of warm milk, then the bucket in washroom would magically fill up with hot water, the clothes would be ready to wear by the time shower was done, breakfast would be ready on the table, shoe would ofcourse be polished and someone would hand me the tiffin, as I would head to my classes.

But alas, ...par hua kuch yun, my friend would bang at my door saying "uth jaa hero, kab tak karishma ke sapne leta rahega" (Karishma Kapoor was the Priyanka Chopra of that time), warm milk ke jagah subah subah warm gaaliyan sunne ko miltee, the bucket would have to be carried to the washroom and the water would be as cold as Vijay Mallya after the first IPL season, the clothes would be as crushed as Shahid after being dumped by Kareena, breakfast would have to be taken in the Mess with everyone fighting for parathas as Amitabh and SRK fight for TRP ratings, shoes would be as dirty as Salman's jokes in Dus ka Dum and there would be no concept of tiffin.

The moral of the above rant is that with time every chore was learnt albeit the hard way. Now, I can cook my own meals, press my own clothes, do laundry, polish my shoes, prepare my own tiffin etc etc but the one thing that still eludes me is shirt ka button lagana. So, if someone knows how to stitch a button, please contact me with precise instructions in my comment box. Dhanayawad !!