I love my machines. from my books to my car, everything I own, I love it & possessively so. Though that does not nearly translate into anything ever being handled with extreme care..or even remote care for that matter. My phone has a broken slider, keys which work of their own accord and a cracked screen. my camera has a lens that gets stuck and needs a rough manual rotation to fix every now and then. my car...oh well I could go on listing the damage but you get the idea..the point is, that all these things still work and work well. So much so, that I almost feel they respond to my needs :) I have countless memories of times when my phone battery was on the verge of going out but it held fort till I made that one last important call which you always need to make just as your phone is dying out. Countless number of heavy rains when I pleaded the almost-broken lever to stay connected the windscreen wipers till I got home only to promptly forget about getting it fixed yet again.Despite this rough handling, my machines still respond to me until one day I went too far.

It all started when I went to meet a very good friend after a very long time. After years of pleading hectic schedule at work, he had finally cornered me for a birthday treat, making it sound like the final call & quite successfully so!We decided to meet up at one of the dozens of Noida malls and had a great time together; once his anger at my ignoring him for so long had subsided i.e. After 2.5 fabulous hours I went smiling away to work, wondering when was the last time I had laughed so much and why I didn't meet my friends more often, promising myself that I would. A usual day at work ensued, and I promptly forgot about everything else; just as usual. The day turned out to be unusually long and hectic and after 16 hours of madness I finally slumped my way back to the parking lot, already half asleep and pressed the lock.Only; nothing happened. Confused I tried again.Nothing.Alarmed and awake as a lark, I called my boss, who was still working.
"You must have left the lights on and the battery must be exhausted"
"But thats not pos...wen did I..how did thi..I didn...Oh My God!!!"
and then the realisation dawned upon me..I had switched on the headlights while parking in the basement of the mall on my way to meet my friend and never switched them off.
"Just tell the guards to push it, it should start", I could dimly hear my boss's advice
I looked around, but as expected, when most needed, guards were nowhere to be seen. Now I may not be a delicate darling, but I am not exactly Laura Croft either! Pushing the car was beyond my strength & endurance.Suddenly without warning my phone died. This had never happened before.There I was in one of the most unsafe cities with the highest crime rates against women, all alone standing outside my car in the wee hours of the morning, with no phone to call for help & the car door wouldn't even open! In the midst of despair, I saw my boss, with a few of my other colleagues coming down to the lot. I have never been more thankful to the ridiculous working hours of my office than I was at the moment.All tired and sleepy, obviously displeased but too polite to complain, they tried to push my car nevertheless.

Some loving & coaxing (for there is no other explanation) had gotten the door to open somehow and I was able to steer it, as they pushed.My car however, had other plans. After nearly 10 mins of repeated efforts and pushing in practically every direction, it just refused to start.

The emergency help line I had been diligently subscribed to was not responding this one time I tried to call them (from one of my colleague's phone of course).It felt like I was being punished for all the mishandling I had given all my things all this time and I tried to talk my way (to the car of course) out of it, but it refused to listen too. Physics had taken over blind emotions, Science had won over the supernatural and I couldn't stop cursing myself.Exhausted, my colleagues gave up. I love my car too much to have agreed to leave it there n go home. But there seemed to be no other solution, & I couldn't possibly ask my colleagues to keep trying without avail.

Just as I as about to give up hope, lock the car (abandonment is more like the feeling I had) and leave, quite literally as a ray of hope a professional cab driver appeared on the scene, alongside the rising sun. He took the batteries of his cab out, plugged them into mine and started charging them. Soon I heard the musical sound of the engine coming back to life....



I was so happy that I forgave all the cab drivers in the world for their reckless driving & thanked all the heavens in that split second. The driver asked me to keep the engine running for at least half an hour and diligently, vowing never to let it happen again, I drove back home, parked the car. Suddenly there was a knock on the window

"Ma'm are you okay?"
I had fallen asleep, foot on the pedal, head on the wheel. I looked at my watch, 35 minutes."Good!", I thought, I quickly thanked the man, stepped out of the car, locked it and went inside.
Dimly in the background I could hear a voice calling behind me....
"Ma'm you have left the headlights on..."