Several fashion trends start with the conservative people raising their eyebrows till they become so common that they are accepted as “normal”. To cite a few, noodle strap dresses, capris and cold-shoulder tops now do not even merit a second look. Similarly, torn jeans left most mothers in a treacherous mood. Not any more.

However, they are still looked down upon, particularly in some offices, where power dressing and decorum are insisted upon. A colleague overheard a conversation in the Metro, where a young thing was complaining how her supervisor objected to her wearing torn jeans to office. “Just you wait,” she rebelliously said. “Tomorrow, I’ll wear jeans that are even more torn!” It just goes to show how every generation rebels against conformist seniors!

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Repeating mistake

There is a popular saying that one can never make the same mistake twice because the second time, it’s not a mistake but a choice. However, a colleague recalled how his friend seemed to have learnt nothing from this saying and repeated the same mistake twice, incurring much loss. The other day, our colleague narrated, his friend woke up in the morning to a burning smell.

Looking around, he noticed his laptop emitting smoke and realised he had left it on charger and fallen asleep. Apparently, the same friend had two years back committed the same mistake and he lost precious data and information on his laptop. He had gone into depression for three days and it took him quite a while to partially recover the lost data. This time too, the poor chap called up his friends and relatives to share his grief and try and rebuild his data bank.

Impish kid!

One can hardly ever predict what is in a child’s mind. A colleague narrated how one such incident put one of her friend’s family members in an awkward situation. Her friend’s uncle, who had just come to Delhi, thought it’d be nice if he picked up his sister’s five-year-old son from school. However, the situation turned really awkward as the kid, on seeing his uncle, said he did not know him. The uncle was taken aback and received suspicious looks from the teacher! He tried his best to talk to the kid, but he refused to recognise him at all.

The teacher then called up the kid’s parents and they assured that he was the uncle and that everything was fine. Nonetheless, the mother had to turn up to pick up the child and normalise the situation. After all the chaos, the little imp happily skipped back home, blissfully unaware of the mini-scare he had set off!

Confused extension

Appendages to names can often lead to confusion, a colleague asserted. Waiting for a Metro at a Noida station, a train arrived but with no display of the final destination. The usual commuters boarded the train but one young man kept asking whether the Metro will go to “Extension”. As there are many places named “Extension”, the other passengers asked where he actually wanted to go. Luckily, one of the regular travellers asked whether it was Mayur Vihar Extension that he meant, to which the youth replied in affirmation. As the situation got cleared, the co-passengers quickly assured him he had boarded the correct train and that his destination was just a couple of stations away.

Tailpiece

Presiding officers are the unsung heroes of India’s gigantic electoral process and quite a few deserve bravery medals for discharging their poll duty in difficult situations.

Contributed by: Abhijeet Anand, R V Smith, Rakesh Kumar,        Nivedita R, Kunal Roy and Asha Ramachandran