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An Unexpected Unforeseen Fall Out of a Power Cut

 An Unexpected Unforeseen Fall Out of a Power Cut by Dinesh K Kapila

I just got to know this today. With power cuts all over the nation as the demand for power escalates with each hot and humid day, people swelter for hours with generators and invertors. We are lucky in Chandigarh to escape the worse of it. Then there are stories around power cuts. Of couples booking hotels to escape from the heat or of a well to do businessman accommodating both his wife and his mistress in the same hotel. But this incident from reportedly a major commercial city of Madhya Pradesh takes the cake.
A boy named Rajesh, a young lawyer in the corporate sector had been out drinking beer with his friends. Around 12 am they dropped him at a roundabout close to his rented house. It was a rather tony locality. As he started walking, somewhat unsteadily, the beers had many one to many, he found the road rather dimly lit and dark. He walked on carefully and then crossed a guy sitting on the pavement just outside a house. He was fanning himself and cursing quietly and was only in his well inner wear (underwear or better put boxers). And rubber slippers. Poor guy he thought as he walked past him. Must be very hard up. Ten feet more he thought if I can spend Rs 2500/- or beers today, I can give this beggar Rs 50/- at least. So he turned, it was not easy to turn, came back and dropped Rs 50/- into the lap of the guy in the boxers. The guy looked at Rajesh, who was planning to turn away, after being duly acknowledged, when the guy got up suddenly and slapped Rajesh hard. The warm fuzzy effect of the beers vanished.
As Rajesh looked at him in shock, he shouted, ‘I am the owner of this house . There is no power for hours. The damn generator has conked out, the invertor does not work and my wife and daughter in law are cribbing away. Its too much. I sat outside to get away from them and you think I am a bloody beggar !! ‘.
Rajesh just folded his hands and the guy shouted abuse and then more colourful abuses for every female in his house, then ‘could you not even see my shorts, they are Nike’s best’. That was a killer ! Brand conscious also to the extreme.
Poor Rajesh, the happy buzz in his head totally gone, he scrambled from there while the man continued to berate him !!
Tailpiece
Forty years ago. My brother was home from the NDA. Full of energy. He decided to paint the gate. Mom thought good idea. It would pass the time. An Old T Shirt. Old faded shorts. Slippers. And sat on a stool. To paint. Along came two Retired Army Guys, looked at him, and said loudly and gruffly, ‘listen (suno) we are here to see General Saheb, go and tell him Col so and do and Col so and so are here’. Do it quickly (jaldi Karo). They mistook him for a painter ! Well his reaction I will not go into here.
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Shishir Sharma, Anukool Bhatnagar and 14 others

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