Man Proposes God Disposes !

Most mornings don’t go as per my plan. Come to think of it, settling my two kids into their morning online classes during the last 1.5 years is nothing short of chasing a mirage, one which should ideally have made me a pro at this. But some people never learn. I most certainly don’t. Every morning I wake up thinking, this is going to be a fabulous day and I ain’t fretting about nothing! Inevitably the morning isn’t half as fabulous as it is supposed to be, and I am practically fretting about almost everything.

On one such fateful morning from last week, I woke up to two very groggy, clingy, and cranky kids. After hoisting my mommy flag atop the toothpaste- toothbrush- teeth mountain (which by the way is a huge mountain!), I managed to set the ball rolling for my elder one’s class. I proceeded to conquer the next hurdle, my younger one’s class. Her highness, left no stone unturned in getting on my nerves, so much so that at one point I thought ek din nhi attend karegi to kya hoga?; Only to remind myself that courtesy this thought, she had secured the first position from the bottom in terms of attendance. The teacher had made it abundantly clear that this better improve in the coming quarter, and I was determined to obey her instructions.

I picked up the tablet and tried to switch it on. It just wouldn’t start. I had kept it on charging the moment I woke up and ideally this should not have happened. Great!! Class starts in two minutes and the damn thing is acting pricey at this hour. My efforts to get it started went in vain, so I decided to get the class going via my mobile, without any further delay. Of course, that did give her highness one more point to grumble about, but boy did I care! She understood that the Monster Mumma mode is on and that listening to the teacher is far more pleasant an experience. Finally, both my kids were behaving like normal kids attending their classes with interest and I like Ajay Devgan (from Phool aur Kaante movie) was adeptly recreating the iconic scene with legs stationed on top of two bikes. Just replace the bikes with two rooms in my case. Sometimes I find myself doing a crazy split between the two rooms!! Now all this is normal.

 The problem began when my phone started ringing. I disconnected once. But the caller wouldn’t stop. He kept calling. It was an unknown number. When he did not budge, I decided to pick up. Maybe it was sort of urgent. Why else would someone call again and again despite being rejected? Of course, my daughter’s class would be disrupted, but then it anyways was getting disturbed by this fellow’s non-stop calling.

I picked up the call and the conversation went something like this:

Him: “Madam kabse call kar ra hu. Phone to uthao. Apka courier hai. Address bataiye!”

Me: “Arre, aapko address nhi pata to courier mera kaise hua? Address hoga na likha courier pe.”

Him: “Madam ispe galat address hai. Pin code Nainital ka hai aur baaki address patanhi kaha ka. Apka number diya hai iske liye call kiya.”

Me: “Nainital ke liye maine koi order place nhi kiya hai. Mumbai hoga.”

Him: “Nahi madam, shuru ka address ho sakta hai Mumbai ka but last mei Nainital and uska pin code hai. 2 books hain.”

Now this sentence got me thinking. I quickly checked my mailbox and saw the delivery details. I realised what probably had gone wrong. While purchasing, I had mentioned all the correct details of my Mumbai home except the city and Pin code. That was of Nainital.

Backdrop to this conversation: I had participated in a writing contest in the month of June. The results came out in August and l must have been in luck or something because my story was selected. The writing platform that organized this, had announced that the winning stories would be compiled and published as a book. Basically, my story had been published and I could finally beam under the glory of a Co-Author tag. I received my author copy few days back and I was over the moon to receive it. The only other person whose happiness index was slightly higher than mine was –My mother. She had been enquiring about how to purchase the copy online. I knew my mother was desperately waiting to see my published work. For the same reason, I had placed an order for two books. My plan was to write a loving note for her, on the first page of the book and then courier the same. But that would take time and my mother was getting impatient with every passing day. In the last few days, every phone call ended with the same question, by when will your book arrive? Can I not buy it?

Although I am just a co-author, yet it has made her immensely proud, I know. Every time she asked about it, I too wished the book would reach me soon enough so that I could send it across to her with something written for her. Of course, I hadn’t put it to her like that. All this while I had been telling her, why you want to spend money. I will send you the book.

Coming back to the phone call. There was a goof up in the address. The books were supposed to reach Mumbai, but they ended up in Nainital. The only problem being that the address mentioned over the courier packet did not exist in Nainital. How I pulled off that kind of a stunt online, I am yet to understand.

Anyways, I requested the delivery personnel if he could deliver it to my home in Nainital, to which he readily agreed. I gave him the address and my mother’s phone number. He told me to inform my mother about the delivery.

After all this, I went back online and finished my daughter’s class, which by now had reached its end. Once that was done, I immediately called up my mother and confessed to the confusion about the address.

This is our conversation:

Me: “Mom, I made a silly mistake. While ordering those books, instead of Mumbai I wrote Nainital and entered the pin code of Nainital. Now they are lying in that delivery agency’s warehouse in Nainital. I have given the delivery guy your number and address. The books should reach you today. Do pick up their call.”

My mother (LOL emoji): “ha ha ha .. Achcha hua. I was waiting so anxiously for the book. If you had received it, then it would take another week for it to reach me. See, God heard my prayers.”

May I please mention here, something like this has never happened before. Now that it has, I can’t really complain. I know things didn’t go as per my plan, but I’d like to believe God’s plan wasn’t so bad either. The address’s changed but the books have reached where they really belong.

Basically, it isn’t for anything that they say Man proposes God disposes.

PICTURE CREDITS: Crosswalk.com