The other day, we stopped for tea.
I was traveling with a bright young man, whose verbal dexterity seemed confined to ‘awesome’ , ‘sucks’ and ‘dude’. That’s when he exclaimed, ‘isn’t she beautiful’?
My heart started beating at a faster pace than a sprint champion awaiting his dope testing results. I could have passed for a father who heard his toddler say ‘dad’ for the first time !
I looked around. Who was this beautiful woman, which caused such a sudden leap of language proficiency? There were three people, who I could see. The burly security guard. His wife, who seemed wanting to prove that she was burlier than him. And there was this chap who was serving tea.
Surely, the young man wasn’t referring to any of them. Furrowing my brow and summoning powers from all over, the focus was on finding this lady! Lucky for me, I didn’t say anything more. For in a brief moment, my young friend said more.
‘These Germans. Awesome man. They know how to make these babes….Dude’.
The pea brained Sherlock Holmes in my head, sat up. (Readers are requested to picture a laborious act played out in slow motion, of getting out of deep slumber). As far as I knew, making ‘babes’ and the rest of us, wasnt the purview of the Germans. Alone.
Which was when the eyes spotted a swanky BMW.
“But of course” I said. ‘of course’.
From whereon status quo resumed. The words that I heard for the rest of the journey, were random monosyllables with a strong emphatic ‘awesome’ ‘sucks’ or ‘dude’ thrown in every 17th second. Yes. I was keeping time.
When I got bored of it, and realising that there was some distance to go, the mind declared independence from this mundane activity. Wandering into another time, that a car became a lady. Of sorts.
This banner had appeared somewhere close to where I live. I thought of this Nitin guy as having got lessons from a Warren Buffet or someone.
A quick look and a quicker conclusion later, I was so happy, that you could have spotted my yellow teeth from three miles. Here was a guy, who I thought, was providing customers with a car to get to the beauty parlour and back. This was the mind. My own mind.
Don’t fault me. My own tryst with a beauty parlour is to ferry the missus to one, and sit in a bookstore until she gets her job done! Quite obviously I thought there was a market that this Nitin guy had thought of.
Nitins business acumen wouldn’t have been ephemeral in my mind, but for his English. It started with wondering what was ‘Teflon Coting’ ! What would they do in a beauty parlour that would warrant the cot to get made of Teflon ? You know where that train of thought would lead a pea brained Sherlock Holmes sitting in a corner of the mind.
Not to forget ‘Intirior Cling’. That sounded like love potion !
The world of marketing ! ‘Garage’ marketed as a ‘Beauty parlour’. I know of a ‘Beauty parlours’ that was marketed as ‘Stairway to heaven’. Even as I contemplated taking that stairway, the billboard there said, ‘Stairway to heaven shifted to second floor’. It seemed to be a cruel trick. My eagerness went under the basement.
“ ‘Ossome’ isn’t it ?” The young man said with a jerk, that I half suspect he gave it a special energy to wake me from my trance. I realised that i had been in Nitins world for sometime now.
With a new found insight under the belt, that its possible to have a complete conversation with a bright young man of today, with just three words, I said,
‘Yes. Ofcourse. Ossome’. As an afterthought, added ‘Dude’.
I felt powerful.
