Who has not listened to jokes regarding the genial Sardars or the absent minded professors? Jokes apart, absent mindedness is commonly seen. I remember an instance involving my daughter Prithvi, then studying in plus two. She had driven on her two wheeler to the small town market with her elder cousin sitting pillion.
The shopping destinations were scattered, and after one round of shopping, they moved towards the vehicle. Prithvi started it, asking cursorily, “Keerthi, have you sat?” and drove away, little knowing that her cousin sister was yet to board the vehicle. All the way to the next shopping stop Prithvi kept talking brightly to Keerthi, assuming her replies were drowned in the noise of the traffic. Poor Keerthi trotted at a decent pace calling out to her to stop, but who could hear her voice in the din? When Prithvi stopped at the next point and asked Keerthi to alight, she
was indeed in for a shock. She panicked not knowing what had happened. As she decided to drive back she saw her cousin running towards her. They both had a good laugh over the incident.
A few years ago my second daughter Rukma and son-in-law Prasad, both PhDs, had managed to squeeze in a couple of days amidst their tight work schedules to visit our town for an event where she was to be felicitated. The activities on the day multiplied and they hardly had any time for dinner. It was then that they both failed to remember if they were to travel back that night by bus or train! It was only when the saving grace, the sms, was received from the transport company, they realized it was the bus indeed, with hardly thirty minutes on hand!
A few years later the same duo had travelled with me and the husband on a long trip by road. A train journey was to follow and Prasad took it upon himself to book tickets for my husband, daughter and me. The next day he forwarded the railway sms for the onward journey, and I assumed that the return journey tickets were not booked as I knew he was neck deep busy on the work front. I consulted my daughter Rukma and booked the return tickets. That evening I informed my son-in-law that the needful was done and he nodded, busy in work. The day of the trip dawned and we had an uneventful onward journey. After our work we boarded
a bus to a local hill temple as we had around two hours for the return journey.
Curiously I got a call from Prasad which I could not take, followed by a frantic message saying that he had booked our return tickets with thirty minutes left for departure. I was flummoxed indeed! My daughter, who had known about the earlier booking by Prasad, had not remembered it when I later booked the return tickets! Upon reaching the destination, she had even mildly remonstrated with me for having booked the return tickets since she felt we ought to have left it open ended to travel back at our convenience. A classic case of compounded absent mindedness indeed! The result was that we lost money on one set of return tickets,
our loss being the railway department’s gain.
