FoOt In ThE mOuTh SyNdRoMe

Perhaps I should categorize this incident as an anecdote or rather an embarrassing story or maybe I'll narrate it and you guys may make a decision on what category it should fall under. It was around 9.30 pm on a friday, 2 years back in my engineering college. The inter collegiate festival hosted by my college was drawing to a close. The college buses that had to ferry the hordes of students to different locations in the city arrived at their respective stops in the campus. So called "youth" that we were, there was a whole lot of excitement and everyone were in high spirits (that included me). A gang of us boarded the route no.10 that goes towards east Bangalore via the outer ring road. It’s usually an hour's drive but considering the time at which we were traveling, we could make it in 40 minutes or lesser.

A lot of chit chat ensued as we took our seats, most of which was incomprehensible even to those who were a part of the conversation (in short it was quite chaotic!). The last event had been the Indian and western music group. A number of good performances and some not very good performances were staged (or vice versa). We took our seats in the bus reviewing the performances by the different college bands. We started humming a few famous numbers that were still in our minds and ears. Slowly the conversation moved onto the bad performances of the day.

I decided that it was time for some action and started imitating the singing performance of the lead singer of a college band that had performed the song Duur (from a famous album by the Pakistani pop band Strings). In a bid to entertain the crowd that was already having a good time, I exaggerated a bit (or should I say a lot rather?). I cleared my throat and sang "Du u u u u u u uuuuur..." with animated hand gestures trying to show the breaks and pauses in the singer's voice. I also added "Is this the way to sing a wonderful song like duur? It’s an insult to strings!" I repeated "Du u u u u u u uuuuur..." this time with hand and neck gestures! This scintillating performance (kudos!) by me evoked a lot of laughter and cheer from the majority of the crowd. An aberration to the appreciation being received turned out to be a friend sitting adjacent to my seat. He was trying to indicate something to me and was signaling me to stop. But how can a STAR (that's me) stop performing when the crowd is enjoying his performance to the fullest. So I ignored the RED signal and continued with my show.

At that point my cell phone vibrated. I took a small break from my superhit show and looked into my phone. I had received a message from the same person who had signaled me to stop. I stared at him for interfering in my 15 minutes of fame and with slight frustration, read the message that said :

"The guy who sang that song for the music competition is seated right behind you. So for heaven's sake stop it!!!"

I missed a heart beat. I felt like digging a hole through the floor of the bus and vanishing from that spot right then. I felt like I should turn into liquid and flow out of the bus. I stooped real low in my seat (and in my behaviour) trying to avoid looking at the guy whose "maana mariyaade" I had taken away not just in piece meal but as a whole. All the excitement of the day had just got dissolved in this "put my head down with shame" situation. By then, the rest of my gang had got the information of the extraordinary circumstances and there was a lot of giggling and deliberate coughing around. There were shouts of "once more once more!!” Who needs enemies when you have friends like these?

Realisation struck then. I was ill. I had been infected by a killer virus. An epidemic. More dangerous than any disease ever known to mankind. Its called the FITM syndrome. Foot in the mouth syndrome. No cure known. Can be controlled only by thinking before talking. I'll have to inculcate that in all its forms into my life.

This incident will go down in my history as the “Open mouth foot inside” incident.