Tailor the Sailor !

"Love ke liye saala kuch bhi karega !" Yeah its a movie title, but can be easily adapted to all walks of life. My love for the dollar dreams exemplifies the true sense of the aforesaid line. The idea of falling in love with US of A was quite fantasizing, while I was still in India. I was consciously aware of how deep a hole this love interest of mine is gonna dig into my folks pockets, but I certainly miscalculated the magnitude of troublesome situations it had in store for me. Nevertheless, a commitment once made, has to be kept. And thats what I have been doing since last three months.

Sleeping at odd hours, waking up in the wee hours of the morning, cooking midnight dinner, doing laundry at 1:00 AM in the night and morning walks at 4:00 AM from college to home with temperature as low as 2 degrees are only few of the antics I have been upto in last few months, just to kindle my love for USA. October 29th, 2007 will be remembered as yet another day of my stay in US, when I did something so exceptional so as to make my mother proud of my creative, artistic and innovative capabilities. A city inspection in my apartment complex mandated that all the apartments should have their windows covered with blinds or curtains. The futile search for correct sized blinds, conducted by my roommates left us with no option but to hunt for curtains. Now, for those who have stayed in US or have spent a considerable time looking around for home apparels in the malls, would know that curtains are by no means an inexpensive possession. The price range might vary from as little as $30 to as humongous as few hundred dollars. As students, we usually operate on common minimum program, so spending even 30 bucks for satisfying some city inspectors tantrums is also a big deal for us.

Business school teaches us lots of fundas and expects that we make use of them in the real world whenever and where ever possible. One such rule taught to us was - "Leaders don't do different things, they do things differently". Fortunately, this funda struck both, my roommate and myself at the same time. So in the urge to do things differently in the real world, we decided to stitch the curtains outta a bedsheet and use it for our Hall. For the starters we decided to put up the whole bedsheet on the wooden plank surrounding our balcony window and tighten screws around it. So I quickly jumped on a chair with screwdrivers, nuts and bolts in my hands to display my carpentry skills. It was only after drilling a couple of holes in the wood, both my roomie and I realized that its not the smartest way to fulfill the need of curtains, because by doing so, we would permanently block our entrance door to the Balcony. So we decided to cut the bedsheet into two halves; run a string through the bedsheet in a desi style and then use it like curtains. The length of the curtains was sophisticatedly adjusted by using stapler and safety pins. The finishing of our innovation was so close to real curtains, that even a professional tailor might have suffered from an inferiority complex. I aint bragging, a picture speaks louder than words - you can view the masterpiece for yourself ! If some one wishes to dig deeper in the B School gyaan, he would marvel at the Cost-Benefit Curve which my roommate and I would someday come up with. For my mother these concepts would not hold any significance. All she would care about, is about my artistic contribution in the whole curtain making process. She would not only swell with pride, but would also be relieved to know that her only daughter, who never even bothered to have a glass of water herself, is now handling the household work so efficiently.

Although I would just say in a hushed up tone - " Nahi ma, U have no clue, ki yeh USA Love kya kya karvata hai !"