Monday, February 04, 2013

The man who ate the banana...


I have my weekly group meeting on monday noon. This means that I am quite busy preparing my slides on monday before noon AND there is no time for the usual going out for lunch.. so, I try to take something that keeps me full till 2pm, when I can think about proper lunch.

Today, I decided to take a banana.

I came in, put the banana on the shelf above my computers and started to work. There was a lot of work. 2 things were being juggled together. Results were being calculated and slides being made simultaneously. Absolutely no time to even stand up, let alone thinking of the banana, even though the tummy had started to grumble. Finally, at 11:45, I found some time for the pre-lunch snack that was waiting for me in the shelf above the computers.

I looked up.

There was no banana.

"hmph! that's funny! I could've sworn that's where I had kept it!
Maybe on the other shelf?...
Nope! Not there either..."

It was then, as I sat there wondering where exactly my notoriously bad memory is failing me this morning (Did I forget to get it from home? Is that distinctly visual memory of keeping it there just a reconstruction from  what I expected, rather than real?)... so, it is then that I felt a slight banana-ish taste on my tongue. It took me aback!

"Surely, I haven't eaten the banana and absolutely, completely,entirely, as-thorough-as-is-possible-ly forgotten it!..."

And then it struck me! Aha! If I had eaten the banana, where's the skin, eh? (Let's not think about the taste on the tongue for a while.. it is too traumatic to go near the possibility that I really might've eaten it and forgotten it) There was clearly no sign of the possibly-eaten-but-more-likely-vanished-into-thin-air banana's skin as far as I could see (which isn't much when you sit in what can only quite generously be called a cubicle).

This was a riddle, the only solution to which was that not only did I completely forget eating a banana, I also had no memory of getting up from my seat to throw the skin in the small trashcan in the corner of the office. So I, reluctantly, and very apprehensively (along with perhaps Bernard Hermann's music from a Hitchcock movie playing in my imagination) got up and took 3 steps towards the trash can.

There it was on the top. The unmistakable skin of the lonely banana from my fridge that should've been on the shelf above my computers covering the banana that I clearly had eaten but have no memory of eating.

What will happen to me when I am 60? or even 40? *shudder*

2 comments:

vasudha said...

I was expecting that you actually ate it skin and all. Also, YDI. You should pay attention to when and what you eat (says the woman who cooked unappreciated meals for you so many times).

Rahul Tyagi said...


For me that'd have been funnier but a little less shocking... To see that thing in the trashcan was much more shocking because I could REALLY have sworn that there was no way I had gotten up from my chair at all throughout the morning.

As for "unappreciated" meals, trust me, appreciation and memory don't always go together.. half the movies that I count among my favorites still surprise me when I see them again because, you know, I have absolutely no memory of some of the scenes that made me like the movie in the first place... so, no, those meals weren't unappreciated at all. FWIW, I still remember your Paav Bhaaji.. after all these years.. :)