… And so I went, walking swiftly,
almost running, into the darkness of the night. I asked a few bystanders for a
medical store in the vicinity. “Take the first left from here and then the
second right, Shah Medical Store”, said one. I quickly went in that direction,
dodging the traffic on the busy street. A few moments later, I stood right in
front of Shah Medical Store, panting heavily, sweat all over my face and body, my
sweat-drenched shirt half tucked in and its top two buttons open. I gathered my
breath and looked straight into the eye of a person on the other side of the
store and without any reluctance said out aloud, “Two packets of condom,
please?”
- “Which?”
- “Any… Ummm… This.” I pointed out
to a Manforce packet.
- “Size?”
- “Any… Will you please hurry?
There’s an emergency!”
- “They come in a set of three.”
- “Ok. Give me one set, then!”
Yeah, that was how I first bought
a condom, something unlike most of us who tend to be very hesitant and shy when
we make our first condom purchase. It isn’t something wrong, or to be ashamed
of; it’s just our own mental perception of how we will be thought of, although
nothing of that sort may exist in the seller’s mind. Well, I have had a pretty unusual
incident based on which I surmounted the awkwardness.
Maa, Tej and I were traveling to
Borivali from Ghatkopar in our car. There was heavy traffic at the JVLR
junction and we were moving very slowly. Tej sat in the front alongside me, and
Maa sat behind. It seemed to be the usual boring trip, before Tej switched on
the AC. And suddenly, we started smelling petrol. We thought the smell might be
coming from the outside, as there was a gas station nearby. But the smell
stayed even after we passed the station. I switched off the AC, lowered the
window pane on my side and asked a rickshaw driver whether he could smell the
same. “It’s coming from another vehicle, probably the bus nearby,” he suggested.
Relieved, I drove on. But the smell stayed even after twenty odd minutes. Just before
we reached the Western Express Highway signal, another rickshaw driver began
banging the car window pane on Tej’s side and shouted, “Your car is leaking
petrol!”
Now we were at a place where we
could not park the car, so had to move on, with concern and nervousness evident
on our faces. I pulled over, the moment we reached the Expressway and opened
the bonnet, and tried to figure out what was wrong. No leak. Tried to check all
the connections. All good. I tried to start the car with the bonnet open and
told Tej to see if he could see anything. I turned on the engine. Tej screamed,
“Bhai!” A spray of petrol came out from one of the pipes near the engine area. Ok!
Leak in our car!
A passerby realized the situation
and told me, “This is dangerous. A small spark will cause a blast.”
- Oh! Nice! I hadn’t realized that!
- He continued, “You don’t realize
the danger! Petrol is inflammable; causes fire.”
- “Do you know how to help, dude?”
- “No.”
- “Then buzz off, will you?”
- “I’m simply warning you. Bhalaai ka toh zamana hi nahi raha (there
isn’t a place for goodness)”
- “Do you want to die in the blast
that may occur?”
- “No.”
- “Then run for your life!”
And he actually ran away!
I called up my mechanic who said
he would take quite long to come there. So I asked Tej and Maa to stand there
and went searching for a mechanic nearby. I could find someone from the gas
station, I thought, but it was a long way back. It suddenly struck me that I
had received a Topsline
membership just a couple of days before. This agency caters to various kinds of
emergencies, but I doubted if mine was commonly faced. But hell may care! I
called up the number, gave my exact location and explained the nature of my
emergency. Within five minutes, a Topsline van carrying two men arrived at the
location. It was so similar to a typical Bollywood scene- people in trouble,
and the hero just entered!
They removed their powerful torch
and began observing the leak. “Rats have chewed this pipe, creating a tiny
hole,” explained one. They tried to fix it with a tape. Didn’t work. With
Fevistick. Didn’t stick. They tried to check if they had a similar pipe. Couldn’t
find. It didn’t look like the Bollywood scene I imagined after all. After a
good thirty minutes, they pulled me to a side away from Maa and Tej and whispered,
“We believe that we can temporarily cover the hole with a condom.” Now I don’t
know why I agreed to such a weird idea, but it was such a time when I could do
whatever I could to fix this problem.
And so I went, walking swiftly,
almost running, into the darkness of the night. I asked a few bystanders for a
medical store in the vicinity. “Take the first left from here and then the
second right, Shah Medical Store”, said one. I quickly went in that direction,
dodging the traffic on the busy street. A few moments later, I stood right in
front of Shah Medical Store, panting heavily, sweat all over my face and body, my
sweat-drenched shirt half tucked in and its top two buttons open. I gathered my
breath and looked straight into the eye of a person on the other side of the
store and without any reluctance said out aloud, “Two packets of condom,
please?”
- “Which?”
- “Any… Ummm… This.” I pointed out
to a Manforce packet.
- “Size?”
- “Any… Will you please hurry?
There’s an emergency!”
- “They come in a set of three.”
- “Ok. Give me one set, then!”
I believe the people around started
staring at me, to which I, like an innocent kid, tried to explain the emergency. “Yeah right!” giggled the shop-owner. But I didn’t care much and sprinted
back towards my car. The condom didn’t fix the leak- it was an absurd idea
anyway. Instead, it led the Topsline guys break the pipe into two, at the point
of the leak! They joined the better half of the pipe to the other end, and it
worked!
I look back at the incident years
later now, and manage to smile, as the incident, though life-threatening and
dramatic, did make up an interesting story of someone’s first condom purchase!
