Glass of ‘hot’ water

Last week we both went to a press conference. Samadhi was suffering from a cold and cough, so she decided to stay at the reception, and asked me to go ahead inside. It didn’t sound right to me, but knew she had a reason for avoiding it.

Samadhi didn’t want to disturb the speakers with her coughing. But, I went on pleading with her to join the conference and even promised to join in on coughing, if that would coax her to join me. Finally, she said, she would come in with a glass of hot water. Well, now what? I had to look for ‘hot’ water.

We only had a few contacts at the vicinity and Anuki just happened to see one pass by. He was on the phone and apparently in a huge hurry. I do not wish to reveal his name and therefore will refer to him as Gihan. Well Anuki called out “Gihan”. He did not seem to hear. So she called out a second time this time a little louder “Giha..n”. Didn’t work. Third time she simply yelled, which almost rocked the reception “Giha.....n”.

Fortunately this time he - and almost half a dozen other people noticed her. Anyway he was kind enough to get someone to fill us a glass of water from a filter in the reception, and we were off to the conference hall.

Unfortunately they were stalling since some of the key figures were missing. The air conditioner was at the highest and warm glass of water kept on getting cooler and cooler. I strongly believed that the warm glass of water was the only thing that could keep me from getting kicked out of the conference hall for disturbing the peace.

You can never hide either the cough or love! And to make matters worse the air conditioner was making me cough every five minutes. O....o... the glass has almost run out. What am I gonna do? What if the conference starts now? I looked at Anuki in bewilderment. She said “Ok.... ok don’t panic we’ll go and get a refill.”

Samadhi and I went straight for the filter. I wasn’t too sure how to get the water out and turned to Samadhi for help. But both of us weren’t familiar with this make of filter.

The only option we were left with was to seek help from the girls at the reception. We made sure to be polite to them and asked how we could operate it. The outcome was a sarcastic smile and a look which gave a message of ‘oh, come on you two girls do not even know how to operate a filter?’

We have come across people with such attitudes, they think they know everything and even denies helping others on even small issues. We should never feel ashamed of asking for help on something we don’t know about.

Anyway with a fresh glass of water we were back in business. Finally the conference started. After a while I exhausted my second glass of water. More than a full bladder, my immediate worry was an impending incessant unconcealable cough. Inevitably after a while I started to cough.

I kept on coughing, but not even a ‘peep’ came out of Anuki. Hey what happened to her accompanying me with coughing? She saw me glancing at her and then only did she remember her promise. And she actually started coughing while some one was making a very important speech!!!.