I was  more adventurous than my normal self that afternoon. I took my dream of  surreptitiously attending Prof. Sen’s ‘Industrial Revolution’ class to fruition, checked off ‘writing a love letter to my imaginary lover in the class room’ from my  ‘things to do before I die’ list, loitered around in the garden of the huge library, near the university campus, examining its flora and fauna intently, rather than even turning a passing thought to my ritual of examining  the books inside. I then took a bus to the nearest movie theatre, impulsively, and chose a movie in the unfathomable Mandarin language. Quite evidently, even after stepping outside the movie theatre, I was struggling to figure out the rationale behind the sequence of events witnessed on the screen. Head throbbing from the extra-long and inquisitive walk in the library garden plus a movie that was more like a puzzle, I walked to the tea stall, in my bid to counter my frustration, with a cup of strong tea. To cheer myself up, I decided to ‘play’ with my phone, only to be stabbed in my heart (so to speak). My dear phone was  missing from the one bag that I considered to be ‘impregnably safe’. I took the only available course of action- started retracing steps in my mind, in an effort to locate the exact moment of my last rendezvous with the precious gadget. Delusional from the offbeat day, my memory betrayed me. So I physically dragged myself back to the theatre, and resorted to a mendicancy of the most extreme variety. The doorman wouldn’t let me in as the next show was already, one-quarter way through. Eventually, however, my hands folded in the perfect namaskara and the moistness in my eyes convinced him to let me in. Like a blind woman without a stick, I meandered across to the last seat in the theatre where I was seated not so long ago. There was no sign of the phone. While  hurrying down the flights of stairs, the worst thing happened. I tripped over and fell. In a matter of seconds, I lost the ability to stand up on my own. Before I knew, I was in an ambulance, on my way to the nearest nursing home. I prayed to God for the warden to be kind enough to not confiscate my seat in the one-bed, one-chair, one-creaking cabinet of a luxurious room, since I had violated the 10 pm entry rule. I requested the nurse to call my hostel and inform the warden about my predicament. The two months that followed saw me glued to my bed in a semi-handicapped state. For the want of better things to do or a phone to give me sweet company, I started writing, 24/7. The good news is, you might soon see my name peeping out of a shelf in a book store. All because of, the night I lost my phone.

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