Umbrella Tales

How someone's care and devotion for your parents can make you take a tour of the part of city that you never ventured before is amazing!

I was all excited and ready to fly home for a wedding and hence carried a lot of those shimmering and gaudy looking clothes which in no right mind can you imagine wearing anywhere else. My friend calls and informs me that she has a gift for my parents and that I should take it with me. It was a long triangular looking gift wrap and I couldn't imagine what could be in that shape. When I opened it there was this beautiful wooden umbrella which had Paris depicted all over it, very beautiful. But then the length of the umbrella wouldn't go into any of my cases. I decided to carry it in hand and since my husband was coming to drop me, hand it back to him, if the authorities would stop me from taking it.

Montreal airport was a sail through and I carried it with me as cabin luggage. I made a sound mental note that I should not at any cost let go of it and made sure that I had it with me when I got off the craft at London to change flights. I had two precious pieces of luggage with me and do not mistake me for the gold or any other documentation that was carrying. One was my son and the other was the umbrella.

In London however the airport authorities decided that umbrella wasn't much use in-flight and after profusely promising me that they would take good care of it, slipped it off my hand and dropped it for check-in luggage. Since the feeling of missing something in my hand kept reminding me continually that there has to be an umbrella there, I was able to wait for an extra half hour and reclaim it in-spite of it being the early hours of a Chennai morning and my son deeply in need of some rest. It is not an exaggeration that I was clutching the umbrella in one hand and my son in the other till I reached home.

On the day I had to leave for Hyderabad to visit my parents, my son took it upon himself to remind me several times lest I forgot the umbrella in its last leg of journey!!. At the Hyderabad airport I watched the baggage of the entire craft before the fragile items were brought out and I had to go specially claim it, which took an extra 45 minutes of my life but I was glad that I finally got it to where it was intended to be sent!

This momentary relief lapsed my judgment and to oblige to my son's request of allowing myself to be his pillow during the hour and half journey home, I made the terrible mistake of leaving the umbrella in the boot of the car with the rest of the luggage. By the time I reached home, my son was deep asleep and I was holding him while the driver unloaded my luggage. And then I went upstairs, surprised my mother, all greetings and hellos and huggies and the bags opening for gifts and then.....................! Shock, Anger, Irritation ................on myself...How could I do this???????

I FORGOT THE UMBRELLA !!

Not that I am popular for my memory but this one took "the umbrella"!! Then started the frantic calls to the cab company and lucky for me I went in for some registered and expensive cab and dint haggle my way through some "Diamond car service" . Then I realized that apart from the time that I hired the cab, I pretty much dint know anything else, not the driver's name, nor the number on the cab!! But within a few minutes I got a call back and they had managed to trace the driver and get a confirmation that he did indeed have the umbrella.

With my sis-in-law's suggestion, I started yet another long journey to seek it back. Since the cab company's office was conveniently situated at the outskirts of the city we made a long journey viewing the changed city, appreciating it as well as recounting to myself the "good old days". A typical Hyderabadi can never lead to your destination without a couple of " just idhar se right" and "saamneich hai" ...so...after several wrong turns and calls back....finally I broke the code and found the building. As I entered the office, my story seemed to have preceded me and greeted me with a mixed look of amusement and amazement around there. They probably were peeking from behind their tinted doors to see the great samaritan, who had such concern for a missing umbrella......I mean...who does that kinda thing!!

The whole evening I dint let go of the umbrella till I reached home and handed it into my mother's hand with best compliments from my Montreal friend!! :) .. Mission Accomplished!

After hearing through my story my dear friend even offered to pay for all the anxious journeys I made for getting the umbrella back and apologized for being the cause of it, but I wouldn't hear of that because the adventure was - Priceless!!

Moral of the story....NEVER....EVER.... forget to take the cab driver's name and number....unless you particularly enjoy wild goose chases involving Paris pictured umbrellas !! :)