Ships Ahoy!Fear Ahead!

To quote Anthony Price, being frightened is an experience you can't buy.U can be the skinniest undernourished person but fear makes u strong like no complan, horlicks or boost can ever hope to and am a living testament to the fact. I never realized my physical strength until I found myself capable of breaking free of 5-6 so-called-friends who grabbed both my arms and tried to drag me onto the “running steps” aka the escalator. They tried everything including jeering at me and pointing at tiny little kids and really old people who hopped on like it was a cakewalk. I simple shook my head and commented on irresponsible parents who let kids on those stairs. Even my parents and lil bro tried several times to get me on the stairs. Luckily it never occurred to any of them to push me from the back or I wud have been a goner.Spencers had a beautiful set of plain ordinary stairs and I still absolutely love them. They stuck right where they stood and so I cud visit the upper floors of the building.
I managed pretty well until there came a day when I visited the city center mall in chennai…Horrors!!!The only staircase available was the fire exit. I took those up to the 3rd floor. But the food court which they had set up very thoughtfully on the top floor had me knocked out. The only way to reach that floor was by the escalator. My friend, Nita, and I were starved but there was no way I wud get on that deadly thing. So we waited for the elevator which rarely came and when it did come the guy controlling it refused to open the doors for us. I mean,you wud really expect him to show some sympathy to two skinny girls trying to preserve their kilos.Nita was by then so hungry that she was prepared to go down on her knees in front of all those people if that wud get my miserable self on the stairs. It really did not help that 2 silly men stood at the top of stairs laughing at my plight. Really! And no number of menacing cold looks on my part dissuaded them from watching the free escalator-bumbling-bimbo show. After abt ten rides in which he repeatedly ignored the two women who started off trying to floor him with wannabe open-up-honey smiles and ended up frantically shaking their fists at him, the elevator guy wrote me off as a loser and opened the elevator doors. The sheer relief!!!That’s when Nita asked me how I planned on surviving in the States if I can’t ride the escalator.
Crumbs!

I looked at her in horror and decided I wud have to tell my manager that I really cant go to the US.I mean, I wud not even have my friends with me to push me onto it and what if I miss my flight cos I cant get on the escalator? And how on earth wud I manage with all that luggage? Cripes! Of all my phobias, the escalator-my appendages-go-ice-cold-phobia takes the prize for sticking on with me till I reached the ripe age of 25 years. I had moved on from the days when I wud be talking with my mom in the kitchen and louder the pressure cooker whistled, the closer I moved to the kitchen door until a split second before the full blown whistle when I wud bolt from the kitchen and end up in the living room. And once the whistle stopped, I‘d hurry back to the kitchen and continue our conversation. I had hated the things and when my mom asked me how I intended to boil potatoes, I told her I wud boil it the plain old way, no matter if 1/4th of my life was spent waiting for my potatoes to be done.After all,its the journey that matters and not the destination. As I grow older,though I still believe that the journey is more important, I have changed my mind abt devoting 1/4th of my life to boiling potatoes.I am a lot less patient with the potatoes and every time I see my cooker,I sing out "Bless u,cooker dear".(just kidding)It drives me nuts to see the hubbu boil potatoes the plain way instead of using the cooker.As for me, I have graduated to a point where I simply stand near a hot cooker and coolly hold up the weight with my bare hands to let out the steam from the cooker. Am I brave! Chuckle!

But at the Chennai airport having completed my immigration check, I stood petrified in front of an escalator, cursing the guy who invented the thing. Luckily for me, there was an elevator which lovingly took me up to the second floor. I thanked my lucky stars and praying that all the airports ahead would have an elevator along with the dreaded “moving stairs”.I survived until I reached Malaysia for the stopover and then, boy, was I in the deepest smelliest dung!

“One will never reach distant shores,
if he chooses to remain upon the dock,
In fear his little ship of dreams
may be dashed against the rocks.”
It was a choice between my fear and my dignity, my nation’s pride and as an Indian ambassador it was getting on the darned thing with élan or losing my “prestige shoes”. Someone once said that courage is not absence of fear. It is merely the understanding that something else is more important than fear. Well, you would not believe it and neither could I but ultimately it was my pride in being Indian that forced me to put my foot on the dangerous contraption and pretend I had not climbed a stair in my life. Whew! Every escalator I met on the way I handled with a firm grasp on my hand luggage, a prayer and a determination I did not know I possessed till then. I cud not wait for too long before putting my foot on the darn thing as this may draw the attention of other passengers to my sorry state. And I did not want to even think of my mortification if that happened. Like they say fear makes the bogeyman bigger than he is

After all I had overcome my fear of the pressure cooker, hadn’t I? Similarly once upon a time I had been scared of lighting gas stoves. I positively hated the pop sound it made. But that fear along with my fear of pressure cookers went away in my days of living alone in Cbe.Today, with stairs a scarcity in US and having had to fly several times ever since coming to LA, I can hop onto the escalator as elegantly as I walk on flat ground (Dont boo,mama.Not ladylike at all) but am still a bit careful and I still love the plain old stairs. Why? Cos though amateurs built the ark and professionals built the Titanic, it was the Titanic that sunk.