[Note: This story is inspired by the very (mis)happening life of someone the author recently had the pleasure of meeting and knowing]
He sought fun; trouble sought him. He flirted with danger… and woke up regretting his one night stands (some lasted longer than a night, unfortunately) with accidents. Trouble dogged his footsteps like a bloodhound with a bone to pick. Lucky truly was an embarrassment to his name,and he wasn’t sure if the fault lay in his stars or in him. Maybe Caeser could have divined that for him, but the man had long since gotten skewered and gone the shish kebab way. Just his luck. Either way, he was fortune’s fool, that was for sure.
However, despite the dark cloud of misfortune that loomed on his horizon like a stubborn stain that refused to go away (believe me, he had tried), he was a happy-go-lucky guy (an unfortunate pun, but apt all the same).
Lucky loved target practice. Shooting at empty plastic bottles was his favourite pastime. When he wasn’t being injected with tiny doses of formic acid by an army of angry ants for daring to squish their home, that is.
When Lucky wasn’t mastering his shooting skills, he was rescuing damsels in distress from the clutches of his lecherous landlord. Said landlord would do his best to woo unwitting foreign female tenants by milking his limited English vocabulary to the best of his ability, lisping sweet nothings into ears that quailed at the onslaught and subjecting their noses to breath that smelt like foot fungus that hadn’t ever seen the light of day. His seduction truly was an attack on the senses. On such occasions, our knight in shining armour would take it upon himself to prevent the errant lamb from straying from his marital bed by reminding him of his blissfully ignorant other half and the two bundles of joy he had fathered.
In return, the landlord made sure that our hero didn’t get so bogged down by life’s worries that he forgot to stop and smell the roses. And the night air. And all the interesting smells that one has the pleasure of experiencing when a torrential downpour leads to the overflowing of gutter water on to the streets. He did so by very thoughtfully forgetting to pay rent to the owner of the guest-house (the landlord had taken the property on rent from a third party i.e. the actual owner of the guest-house) and surprising our hero with a dark house and a locked door. After all, who doesn’t like surprises? And our friend is no stranger to them. He often says, “When life throws lemons at you, have tequila”,and since he is a man who practices what he preaches, I believe that that is precisely what he is doing at this very moment.
P.S. Shoutout to the Bard of Avon for always having my back. P.G. Wodehouse, you precious gem, the world is a happier place because of you. And last but not the least – R.O., for being a good sport and the comic relief we all need in life.
This write-up was submitted by Samyukta Menon (4th Year)
