Alls well that ends well!

 It was a fine Sunday morning, I should have woken up earlier. I had to sit a very competitive examination at an examination centre I had never gone and never heard of before. It was at 9.30 in the morning, and I woke up at 8’o clock. At the first glance on the wall clock, I was convinced that the clock had stopped last night at eight.

Oh no, seeing the same time displayed on the mobile phone and my mother’s scream hit me hard, I nearly fell off the bed. Nothing was ready. “What had I been doing last night? Oh, Aishwarya was gorgeous in that lovely red dress and Sharukh was really handsome.” Another one or two minutes was wasted in pensiveness until my father also screamed at me. Wearing a wrinkled top and not at all matching denim, dishevelled to the maximum, I got into the car with pens and pencils in one hand and a sandwich in the other. “Oh, I forgot the bottle of water,” I screamed. “I cannot turn back. Buy one from a nearby shop,” father exploded. I sat back and tried to loosen up. The morning was a complete disaster; I hope that at least the examination will be a piece of cake. “Dad, do you know the place?” “I think so. I asked my peon for directions,” he replied. I was relieved. I admired the striking colonial type buildings along the road. Turning left and right, finally dad brought me to a place which looked like a school. “The building over there with a high green wall is your examination centre,” he pointed. “Right, then after the examination I’ll have to come home by bus?” I asked praying he would say he would come. “Yes, you better. Walk down this lane and what you see over there is the main road,” he rekindled my hopes. I walked into the premises, without wasting even a millisecond to confirm that the place was correct. “Could you tell me where hall number 01 is please?” I inquired from one of the girls there and they pointed to me the direction. As I was on my way to the hall, another candidate asked me, “Is this Wolvendal School?” I was flummoxed, because it was not my examination centre, “I’m not sure. I didn’t actually check the board, however, my centre is Kotahena Central College,” Shocked as I was, she suggested, “Shall we ask somebody else?” “Yes, sure” At the end of all the inquiries, I realised that it was I who had come to the wrong centre. I hurriedly rang my father while those girls lamented that I had to go a long way to find the centre in a limited time. My furious father virtually flew to the place and as soon as I got into the car he said, “Didn’t you ask directions to the school?” “They said I need to go to Kotahena,” I stuttered. “No, it should be somewhere around here,” he screamed. He took a nippy turn to the next byroad, and asked a person about the school, “Go straight on this road, and take a right turn and then a left turn.” We followed his directions and it brought us nowhere. Time was ticking fast and there was precisely 10 minutes for the examination to begin. Highly frustrated, I was almost in tears. My father kept scolding me about my messy life. He dashed at of the car to ask directions, on his way back he asked another. He said, “Kotahena! My Gosh, you need to go to Kotahena what are you doing here?” We silently came up to the main road. The admission card had the address of the centre as Maha Vidyala Veethi. We were both convinced that the lane should be somewhere around here. I actually could remember passing that street when we were on our way to the earlier place. We gave up asking for directions for the school. We asked for the street. Within a few minutes, we were standing in front of the school. As always, I have been lucky, it was exactly 9.30 and the examinations had not yet begun. By the time I entered the school, the candidates were still loitering. The morning was full of action and within seconds, my mind was at ease to write the examination in style.