No this wasn’t back when I was 5 years old. In fact it happened this very year on my maiden visit to Delhi.
I’m sure you’re wondering in this day and age how I managed this..Well read on…
Now its no surprise that Delhi has terrible traffic right, so when my friend picked me up from central Delhi and we headed to Ambience mall in Gurgaon, I conveniently fell asleep in his car. There is only so much radio listening I can do amidst never moving traffic that too during the peak hour in the evening.
I reckon I must have slept off for a little over an hour when we finally made it to our destination. I was groggy yet excited to have actually gotten there and happily got off at the entrance and made my way to the mall while my friend went off to park his car.
Spot the missing bit yet?
Anyway me being the incorrigible shopaholic I am, the sights and smells of the mall invigorated me and I headed off with vigor to hit as many shops as I could!(Delhi NCR’s largest mall? Challenge accepted!)
Initially I was too preoccupied with all the stores to miss anything but after a while I was like, “wow…this guy is taking so long to just park and get here! Let me call him and find out where he is.”
And that is when panic set in! I couldn’t find my phone no matter how many times I turned my bag inside out and I had no other way of contacting my friend! At a complete loss of what to do next I made my way to the concierge desk and explained to them that the situation I was in.
They calmly offered me their phone and asked me to use it to call my friend. But here’s the thing: I didn’t know his number! They gave me judgmental looks and asked for the car number and description but I drew a blank there as well! More judgmental looks followed. They probably thought I was making this all up or probably hooked up with someone right there!
But here’s the back story: this friend of mine (let’s call him A), was a friend through one of the events that I did for him in Bangalore. Post that we’d kept in touch on snap chat and when I did finally go to Delhi, we met for the first time. Gosh, now you’re probably judging me too! No man! Absolutely no romantic liaison whatsoever. People do just exchange generic snaps as well on snap chat you know…as hard as that is to believe!
Anyway this explained how I had no clue as to what his car number was or his cell number. And yes I can be daft like that because I didn’t even remember the make or model of his car.
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| That’s me and A chilling after the happy ending to this story! |
Coming back to our story: there’s me feeling hopelessly lost in this gigantic mall (really it is gigantic, they have buggies to take you from one end of the mall to the other!) and a judgmental pair of concierges at a loss as well as to how to help me out. Yeah we did make quite a few announcements calling out to A to report at the enquiry desk but to no avail. In the meantime I kept looking at all the shoppers being ferried in a buggy with my heart sinking further with each round that damn buggy took. Also at times like these, brain has to go into overdrive and imagine the worst possible things! While I was pretty sure I’d dropped my phone in the car while I’d dozed off, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how I was going to find A and get my phone back(iPhone that too!). I kept picturing scenarios where I’d have to find my way back to my hotel, get back to my city and connect with common friends who could then put me on to A so he could courier my phone back to me. And what would he think of me until such time??? He’d think I stood him up! Or I decided to disappear on him for some inexplicable reason! (Not like we were on a date! But still…) Why didn’t I think of calling my cellphone? Well the brain isn’t known to function rationally at such times!
Dejectedly I hung around, my eyes scanning the mall hoping A would turn up looking for me…and just when I was starting to give up and figure out a way to get back to my hotel, my brain lit up! I quickly headed back to the information desk and asked to use their system, logged into Facebook and messaged A multiple times! (Did I hear you sigh? Like finally! The girl uses some common sense!)
Thank god he was online! He messaged back saying he was chilling at a coffee shop at the mall! Relieved I ran up there (quite like they’d do in a Bollywood movie, que background music)
I reached there only to find A chilling like the coolest cucumber there is! In his words – “Arey I thought you were busy shopping yaar that’s why you weren’t answering your phone”
Just how?!! How can guys be this calm?!
What happened next? Headed to the parking lot and retrieved my phone from his car. Needless to add..post that, I didn’t care much for shopping or the mall!
We just made our way to cyberhub and slayed it there!
And well what else can I say? Thankyou Mark Zuckerberg! Facebook ki jai!
That’s me, A and some spirited Dalli (read Delhi with the dilli swagger) strangers slaying it at Cyberhub.
zeishah 