The Not-So Best Days Of My Life

By Freyan S. Wadia

One would never think a local of Bombay would ever wear a sweater in the swelter of mid-May. Well, here I was- all five-foot-six of me- smothered in a parka, thick sweater, muffler and scarf as if about to brave the Arctic tundra. Thick jeans clung to my legs, assuring me that I would never be cold as long as I stayed faithful to them. Sure, I might drown in the pool of sweat that leaked out of me, but at least that’d be a more interesting (and definitely less ridiculous) cause of death than hypothermia.

So, I stepped out in the streets, the sun and my monkey-cap cooking the (rather scant) contents in my head. I tried to smile at everyone staring at me, but it may have looked more like a snarl. I decided it would be a good idea to pull my muffler up to my nose when a little kid took one look at me and ran down the road screaming. At least Bigfoot’s identity would remain a secret.

By the time I had imagined all the possible ways to murder my best friend, I reached his house. The best part? He wasn’t even the one who got the door. Meher aunty smiled at me graciously as she opened the door and handed me a packet of Parle-G saying, “Ye lo. Aapko Marie pasand he to vo bhi le lo. Hamein gareeb par daya aati he.”

“Arre aunty, I know that- I’ve been coming here for the last twelve years!” came my strangled voice.

“Oh, Ferzi- is that you? Why…?” she trailed off, taking in my rather becoming figure- becoming twice the mass I usually was, that is- with an air of startled confusion.

“Haan haan, humein gareeb par bahut taras aati he,” comes a voice from behind. There he was, the root of my misery, the reason I had been mistaken for everything from a yeti to a hobo. Feroz grinned at me as he crunched an apple with all the elegance of a highland cow. The only solace I had was that he would have a fine time at the orthodontist, what with all the mush stuck in his braces. Or he might get a special mention in the poor schmuck’s suicide note, who knows?

“Told you Barca was gonna win. That you made a bet about it was the heights of stupidity, even for you!” he laughed.

“Shut up- even… uh, Madrid was good!”

“You don’t even remember which club you bet on,” he howled, leaning on the counter to prevent himself from collapsing on the floor. “You were just trying to impress Xerxes when he came over last week!”

“I was not!” I retort, a little too defensively.

“He thinks you’re an absolute nut- you betting on Madrid when the match was between Barca and Man-U!”

“Then... wait, why was I saying ‘Madrid’, dammit?!”

My only response was more manic laughter. Maybe Feroz had part evil clown in his DNA.

“Is this all you thought of, dressing me up like Sir Walter Scott’s remains? Laaame.”

“Oh, just wait, darling- you’ll be his remains by the end of the day!”

He took me by the arm that was rendered three times thicker by the parka and the sweater over it and dragged me outside.

“I’m not going outside like this again! Nooo! LET GO OF ME!”

Feroz flashed a sweet smile and waved at his bewildered neighbours while hissing out of the corner of his mouth,

“Shut up! I still have to live here after you get your sorry ass home!”

“HELP! THIS GUY IS TRYNA MUUUURDER MEEE!”

“Oh, for the love of God,” he said as he facepalmed, yanking my hood. It tore off and I broke free, running as fast as a yeti could on a muggy summer afternoon. I turned my head and saw him standing with the torn hood and a queer expression. He admitted defeat, I assumed. Nobody takes on the track star (of pre-primary school, at least), even though she could currently audition for a laundry basket.

“So long, sucker! YAAAARGH!”

The ground beneath my feet changed physical state, it seemed, and I fell, or rather, was swallowed by the cold. All of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe as liquid filled my nostrils. My arms flailed around uselessly and the more I panicked, the more I sunk. I was barely conscious of a splash a couple of feet from me. I felt arms wrap around my augmented waistline and try to pull me to the shore- if there was one. The only thing that kept me from screaming was the appearance of my friend’s face. At least until it became clear he had no idea what he was doing, either. Now the only thing that kept me from screaming was being three feet underwater.

A strong hand took hold of the back of my collar, and from the looks of it, one had caught onto the back of Feroz’s too. I felt myself being hauled along and then thrown onto solid concrete with all the grace of a whale being beached. My ribs ached, my nasal membrane was on fire, but I was too busy coughing, spluttering and overall throwing up all the water I gulped down to make sense of any of it. I was vaguely aware of Feroz sounding like he was coughing up his spleen beside me, so at least I wasn’t alone.

I looked up in search of our rescuer and even in my subdued wits, I was horrified to see Xerxes standing before us. If it was anyone’s luck to be dressed like Santa Claus mid-summer or near drowned or have the local pretty boy witness them expelling the contents of their stomachs, it could still be normal. But that all three happened to me in a single afternoon, that, that was my luck.

He held his hand out to me and helped me to my feet.

“You weigh a tonne,” he told me in his rich, deep voice.

“Ahaha, thank you,” I giggled, wiping my ex-lunch off the corners of my mouth with a bright pink parka sleeve.

“Feroz, you good, mate?” he called to my friend lying face down on the floor.

“Bruh? You alive?” I said, shaking him as I laughed nervously.

Xerxes shot me a strange look as he rolled my friend onto his back. The look on Feroz’s face startled both of us. He was grinning like a greedy child that had disposed of the extra treacle pudding in the larder.

“You, Ferzi, have to be the dumbest person I know,” he guffawed, “You know, you ran just like Messi did before he took that awesome shot,” -he kissed his index and central fingers and raised them to the sky in salute- “But while he won the match, you fell into an urban society’s swimming pool and nearly drowned. While dressed as a Yeti… ooh this couldn’t have gone better if I had planned it!”

“Uh, Feroz, is that why you called me over?” said Xerxes, looking back and forth from him and me with his mouth slightly ajar. I could see his pretty teeth, all aligned in perfect rows.

“Yeah, you remember that bet we made last week? She LOST! HA!”

“You guys have serious issues,” said Xerxes, throwing his hands up in the air before marching away from us. He’s got such a smart walk. Sigh. But while I would’ve been very happy to gape at him until he disappeared (another three hundred metres that would greatly add to my infatuation), I had a more pressing issue to deal with right now.

“Feroz,” I whisper-shouted at my still snorting friend, “I-I think my jackets are shrinking!”

“They are what?”

“I’m being squished to a pulp here! My blood-circulation- nada!”

“You can come home and take them off, I guess.”

“And what, go home in my underwear? Make all those middle-aged pervs’ days? Or your day, huh?”

“You- you are wearing a T-shirt somewhere, right?” he said, gesturing to the whole of me like I was hiding a T-shirt the way some smuggler at the airport might do for cocaine.

“No, genius, I am not, because it was blazing hot and I never planned to do a high dive!”

“It was more of a cannonball cross a belly flop, but okay.”

“Shut up and help me, you son-of-a-”

“Okay, okay, calm down! Let’s see… ”

The day came to an end as I trudged back home in drenched jeans, holding a plastic bag containing twenty-five parkas and my mortified heart which I must have spewed out at some point. Wearing Feroz’s “I’m With Stupid” T-shirt that was twice too big for me was the straw on the back of the worst day I have ever lived.

And it was all Madrid’s fault. Man-U. Messi. Whoever, dammit!