The Vanishing Act

THE VANISHING ACT!

“Please give me your telephone number V……”.

“Yes. Please take it down. 8688…”

“Oh God! This pen would not write. Please hold on. I will find a pen which writes”. Holding the receiver, I went all around the place and found about two dozen writing instruments but none would write! While one pen had a new refill, which was fully dry, one had an empty refill, one had no refill, one was a dry fountain pen, and one had no head and sadly lay down with a cracked trunk. One pencil was new and yet to be sharpened, while one had a hidden lead which had lost its head to some heartless assassinator! My search went on for 5 full minutes and my friend on the other side got worried about the rising telephone bill and called my attention.

“Hello Sudha. You can note down later. I will send you an e-mail.”

This was not the first time I had experienced this. Every time I had to note down something, an address, a telephone number, an e-mail id, a recipe, a reference, I could hardly find all writing materials readily. If I succeed in spotting a writing instrument, I will not find my diary. My diary always happens to be in the wrong place! When I am on the ground floor, it is on the first floor and when I am on the first floor, it lies on the table on the ground floor! But when I am quick to go up or down in search of it, it simply vanishes from my sight, hiding itself in one of my four or five hand bags! Ultimately, I end up writing whatever I have to note down, on the newspaper, magazine, envelopes received or any damn surface, which accepts my scribbling silently! At the end of the telephonic conversation I coolly forget about the whole issue and thus whatever I note down goes to the old paper mart or the dustbin, as the case may be! If at all they remain on the table and I happen to observe my scribbling after a week, I really would not remember whose number or address I have noted down, for I would have noted down the details without names! 

I am not ashamed of admitting all this, because I know there is a whole bandwagon of such specimens around me because when I am on the other side, I hear the same comments from my friend, “Oh Lord! I try to always keep a notepad and pen near the phone and these children always mess up things! Now, I can’t find a pen to write.” I hardly find someone very organized in this matter, who has everything intact near the telephone and also notes down all numbers and addresses in the same diary! This can be detected very easily, because you meet the same person twice or thrice in a year, conclude your conversation by exchanging telephone numbers, e-mail ids and addresses and every time the conversation begins with, “Oh. I couldn’t find your telephone number, etc. How much I wanted to contact you the other day when …………..”! My house is full of address books and telephone directories and every time we have to search for a number not used frequently, we have to go through all of them. The most pathetic thing is some numbers do not get their due place in any diary and remain on the small visiting cards. I have scores of such visiting cards, many of which I cannot tell who has given me! “Why are you so disorganized? Can you not write down all numbers in one diary? Look at this diary. It is in tatters. What if you lose pages?” shouts my husband every time! What if I lose? What is the use even if I do not lose, when I do not know whose number it is or where the number I want is! I was simply dumbfounded when I found in one of the houses I visited, a neat telephone directory with a lovely pen to write near the telephone and also a pouch with neatly stacked visiting cards in alphabetical order! How did someone find so much time? That person really deserved an award! 

After the cordless telephone has been introduced in my house, I have one more item to search for, very often, whenever the telephone rings and that is the receiver! The more the comforts, the more the confusion!!