The USB Fiasco

As if the weird problems in my life weren't a good testimony of my luck, this happened about a year ago.

(A year ago! what were you doing for so long! - this is something P asks me regularly... Thanks P , you are my only reader [I feel]. And yes. I am lazy. Dangerously so.)

There I was madly rushing to complete assignment after assignment, when one particularly ... interesting faculty asked us to get print outs of said assignment. So much for saving the environment eh?

Now, we had this really nifty printer on campus that uses cloud computing et al., Said printer happened to have a minor issue right when we needed prints - so yay for Murphy's Law?. 

This led to us - me n friend Siva, looking for greener pastures. And like the lazy bum I am, I suggested we go by the back gate. And this was an area that was new to us at the time. Also it was the time when my mother never appreciated the godsend that the pockets in all my pants are. So there we were walking along with my wallet, phone and USB drive in hand (The pen drive was my dad's. I lost mine with my wallet a couple of years back - good times those) without any pockets. Now E-city? It's a haven in Bangalore. Trees line the roads, you have good roads too! and huge - really huge- storm water drains, covered by large concrete slabs with conveniently sized holes in them.

Well I guess some of you know where is this going. *Sigh*

I guess things started to go wrong as soon as we stepped out of the college gate. We had no idea how to find the shops from this way. We wandered along happily glad that the infernal assignment was over! And then we started hurrying along because the deadline was ticking closer. And just as we were going to turn around Siva decided to stop and wonder - Which way to go now?

And lo - behold, I bumped into her , and of all the junk I was carrying in my hand (I had pens and hair clips too) the only thing that fell was the USB. And it fell in this excruciatingly slow sllloooowww fall. It was poetic.

 Where did it fall? Well remember me talking about those "conveniently" shaped holes? Yeah that's right. It fell right in. It didn't even slip and slide - no- it just plopped right in. One millisecond ago - USB in hand- second plop! 

I think I had brain fog, judging by the way it took me two whole minutes to register what had happened. In the mean time Siva was freaking out saying "Oh my God! it fell in! it fell in!" . Very soon I snapped out of it, and felt horrified. Then feeling good that I wasn't panicking as much(ha!) I went ahead and started looking for a stick. 

There was no stick.

This might feel like an alternate reality - not finding a stick. But it's true. No sticks in E-city apparently. What did I need a stick for?     I had this brilliant thought of getting the stick through the hole, getting the USB stuck onto the stick and then pulling it out of the same hole. Well, no such luck. First of all there wasn't a decent stick in the vicinity. Second, the USB couldn't be found.

And so after a few minutes of fruitless searching I went and bent down to the hole and started trying to locate the damned thing. Turns out it was there. Me and Siva confidently estimated that the drain couldn't be deeper than two feet. And this is how the first person found us. 

You see this road wasn't isolated. There were vehicles plying. Thankfully nobody had looked at us weirdly till then. Then this good soul came upon us, me sprawled on the ground trying to look into a hole and Siva sitting by my side. He said he would get it out ASAP. And he gets rope. I have no idea how would rope help him when our twigs couldn't - we did find thin twigs which were hardly of any use. 

And then the police came.

There we were, the three adventurers bent over the slab, and the police just stopped there and asked us what were we doing. The police officer asked me which company were we from. (Could be because we were all dressed in our pajamas). I told him - College. And then we get the standard response from him like all Bangaloreans - college in E-city? And although we were both thoroughly terrified by then , they all did help us out. 

Turns out rope is good for pulling out concrete slabs. Oh, and the drain? was deeper than 6 feet. Our twigs would never have worked. And boy am I glad that it was dry? There was no water and the person who stopped first climbed down and got me the pen drive. The police stood around and told us off (okay, told me off. I guess even they realized Siva couldn't be that moronic). He did note down our college's name. We thanked them all and i clutched that stupid USB drive close and we both slunk out before any more details were asked. Honestly, the sigh of relief could probably be heard for kilometers. 

After getting out and getting those cursed prints and returning - through the main gate - we reach college and I keep thinking that any moment now, the police are going to be here, questioning about the pen drive and what it contained  and why - oh why- would I have dropped it at that specific spot. Thankfully they didn't.

And of course, recounting this to my brother resulted in him denouncing me as any known family member that he has ever had. The girls just had a good laugh. And I always look for pockets in any pants or sweaters that I buy from now on.

This adventure ended well. (Given my affinity for all the troubles that I regularly get into - this did end well. I mean, normally this shouldn't have happened AT ALL. But hey, atleast i got it back!) . I know the people involved on that day wouldn't read this blog, but I want to say this anyway - 

Thank you Siva, for not running away when the police jeep stopped even though I could see you were terrified, and thank you for being there the whole time. Thank you, stranger for stopping your vehicle on a busy day and trying to help the weird girl bent over a hole in the ground. Thank you for going down and getting my pen drive as well. Thank you, Sirs for being kind enough to let us get that stupid USB drive out of that drain. Apologies for the inconvenience caused. And yes, I will never hold the pen drive in my hand and walk around like I did.

xoxo....
(you know I do need some tagline like Gossip Girl! Something to sign off with.. Suggest something !)

PS: I haven't written in a long long time. I hope to write more often now. This was just one of the articles that I meant to write as soon as it happened but I somehow didn't. Thanks P for being an.... erm... encouraging (*cough* aggressively so *cough*) force.
Will write soon!

PPS: And soon after that incident we could see all these slabs being cemented in so that nobody else could just pull em up. I guess the USB was unlucky that it couldn't escape to one of those parts of the city.