Golden Palms Resort and Spa is about 57 kms from my office
in Bangalore. It has a beautiful swimming pool shaped like the number eight. It
has a spa to spa yourself out of all the miseries. It has cricket, football,
tennis, cycling, rolling, anything that you can imagine under the skies. And a
lot of attractive people are always around. I was there too, standing on the
spring board of the swimming pool, looking down into the beautiful crystal
clear water. The sun was hot and the pool was cool. A straight dive to the
bottom would be heavenly, letting the gushing water take away all my stress.
The most amazing thing ever.
Every time there is a trip being planned the chances of that
happening is less than 10% (there is no validation of the statistic used). The
discussions that sprout up during the lunch time are a minor escape from the
reality of a sales job, brewing the plan of a weekend at a resort. The chances
of it happening, reduces exponentially with each passing day. I was among the
more optimistic and hopeful ones. So I was already imagining the dive into the
pool. In fact, “obsessing” would be a better word here.
Thursday lunch (13:30 pm): “Guys let’s getaway one weekend,
to a resort or spa and chill out”.
“Yay”! “Hurrah”! “I have been here” “I have been there”. Because the word “soon” would kill it, a date
was fixed. The next Saturday of the extended weekend was chosen as the day when
we would get away.
Where? To one of the four places shortlisted. It was done
quickly and a mail was sent to everyone.
My manager was not included in the plan. I had been
wondering if it would be the right thing to keep him out of the loop. He had
never been a jerk to me, and many believe that the transformation happened
after he had his baby boy. Thus the
hypothesis,”The best way a human can contribute to the future was to pass on
the evolutionary information of survival in their DNAs, by having a baby with a
perfect mate. The verbal knowledge we share with the world is just a minor
fraction of that we have in our DNAs. Babies are indeed a couples’ gift to the
world…”
Nevermind!
The enthusiasm in the group was seeping now, but I managed to keep myself excited.
How would I gear up? A shoulder bag with the towels and
spares, swimming boxers, the power-bank-cum-bluetooth speaker, wearing three-fourths, t-shirt and canvas to
go with a wayfare.
What would I do on the way to the resort? Chat a bit, charm
a bit more, settle down on one of the corner window seats, put on some music
and stare away at anything that was aesthetic.
What would I do when I get there? A bit of snooker and table
tennis to warm up, followed by squash and volleyball, and spend the rest of the
day lying in the pool.
It wasn’t supposed to be. All the nice expectations I had built up was fizzing out when two of my colleagues dropped out of the plan. There were still enough people to make it happen in my opinion but the enthusiasm was now draining out into the gutter. I was getting desperate to dive into the pool now. I wondered if I could just apparate the entire team with me to the Golden Palms Resort, right then and there. But that would be a straight forward breach of my mortal impersonation. They weren’t supposed to know that I was a Genie. I had used my powers once when I did a trick for a colleague on her birthday, but it wasn’t obvious. There had to be a mortal way.
I called up the resort in to ensure the availability, in a hope, that action rather than words would get their lazy asses back on.
The resort was available. All I had to say was a “Yes” to the
adoringly sweet voice of the receptionist.
I rushed into the TSC
bay, ready to inspire my team with a speech. So I began “I have a dream…”
“What other hypotheses do you have?”
I looked back to see my manager, still poking a little joke
on the baby hypothesis. That was it. The moment was gone. He wasn’t supposed to
know about the trip. I gulped the speech right away, and went into a limbo,
where I finally dived into the pool, waiting to splash into the
beautiful-crystal-clear water, only to realize halfway down, that the pool was
crystal clear because there was no water in it. My little mid-day fantasy was
about to crash and burn.
“Pardon me?”
“What other hypotheses do you have?”
“If you ever plan a trip after having a heavy Thursday
lunch, first book and then dream of it.”
