Through the City of Pearls

 

 

We left at dawn and reached at 9 am, as a light shower greeted us. My head, the entire ride, was partially occupied by a murder-mystery called Purple Hyacinth which I had started reading the day before. The plot was immaculate, there was no fantasy to it which is why it felt even more realistic and the characters are very engaging. Also, there was this one passenger on the train with us who was grinning to himself, eyes glazed over. When he was casually scoping his surroundings he still had that goofy grin on and his eyes were unfocused. All the while, I was hoping I would see a sign that he has air-pods or earphones on because he was looking like a straight-up criminal (no offense, by the way because I look like one too whenever I am spaced out. Heck, I look possessed) he was wearing them so weirdly I couldn’t even tell but at least I won’t think badly about him.  The first day was only for sleeping because a certain member of my beloved family spent the entire night excitedly packing the entire family’s baggage, and making breakfast and a whole cake to give our Aunt and Uncle.

….it-it was my elder sister. And yes I did not lift a finger because I had college and please flood her with some love. I am tired of telling her that she was the real MVP repeatedly because she thinks I am saying that just to please her.

Anyways, sleep-deprivation does some funny things to a person’s head. Elder ( lets just call her that for now) points out to a passing field and says,” Damn, you should know what crops these are since you took Arts, right?”

 “That’s a question for those who took B.Sc. Agriculture. But if that were the case,” I had a sudden inspiration, “shouldn’t you know all about the train’s working since you’re an engineer?”

She cracked up. And then she went back and forth, casually roasting my career path while my tongue held itself in honor of her elder sister status. It’s not like I have never roasted her. It’s just that I have a habit of delivering brutal one-liners that I think are harmless but are very much not harmless. And then suddenly she got annoyed and wouldn’t laugh. She looked like she needed a bed, five pillows and a blanket. Poor fellow.

So after a calm session with ice-cream and cake and a good-night’s sleep: we were prepared to have fun the next day.

It was fun. It was a lot of fun. But then I realized that I hate surprises.

Now, you might be wondering why I hate surprises and why I am kicking off this post with a negative start. It isn’t necessarily negative, it was just a really nasty surprise that I had received at an amusement park.

We had gone to a mall for fun and food and it had been a long time since I had visited a mall that was humungous as it should. I am not calling out the malls in my city for being too small but for real, I am a city girl to the core if I were to call your city’s malls small. Anyways, my siblings and our chaperones were wandering through the mall’s amusement park and happened to spot a ride stationed squarely in the middle of the park. I didn’t understand why a ride like that had to be given so much space but then I realized it’s probably a spinning ride that isn’t aimed at providing thrills. By that I mean brutally suspending its passengers in mid-air like a pendulum. I had completely forgotten that when a ride has thicker safety gear, it probably is a very, very thrilling ride. When I had visited Wonderla in Hyderabad back in 2019, I had experienced those kinds of rides for the first time and I mildly enjoyed it. This one on the other hand….

It straight up woke the demons in my soul.

It looked stupid and harmless. It started off pretty slow and sweet. And then out of nowhere, just when I had begun to think that it is fun, the ride sent its passengers to the ceiling. We were perpendicular to the ground. When I saw how far the floor was and how slanted everything looked, my mouth turned dry and I shut my eyes and clenched my butt, begging the almighty to let the seatbelt hold me. I am not kidding when I say that I literally screamed the shahadah (the Muslim Profession of faith) at my initial shock. I tried to scream but I was so badly paralyzed with fear that I slumped into my seat with my head bent. And on top of everything else, I was alone. My sisters where in the seats that were in front of me and I could hear the elder one scream her lungs off. Damn, I should have probably caught on when the supervisor or whatever slammed the seatbelt onto everyone so hard it sunk into my thighs. I should have understood why he triple-checked our belts. I have let my guard down for too long.

 

We explored the mall some more, played a VR game for 15-minutes with the entire gear (my shrieks were that of a hawk. Literally.) The game wasn’t that bad or horrific, it was a simple shooting game with zombies involved. Like I said before, I hate surprises so when we passed each level, the zombies were appearing from newer places, like jumping off from the building behind us or coming out of the ground. I might have slammed into my siblings quite a few times during that period. That’s better than killing your teammates at least. My little sister managed to accidentally shoot me and elder sister 3 times the entire game. I also want to know what sorcery my elder sister used to administer 100 headshots.

 I believe she was focused on quality rather than quantity but that still doesn’t mean how she managed to get a ridiculous 156 kills through that. The game also had the option to punch if the enemy got close, so in that regard, little sister had a score of 34 kills through punches. I was shrieking in the most ‘shy high-school girl who just transferred to a new school’ way and that was embarrassing and stupid at the same time. I could literally hear my aunt and uncle laugh through my gear, every time I tried to swat the zombies away or whenever I screamed if the gun wasn’t reloading fast enough. I was standing on the ground, my legs 5 feet apart, hands outstretched on both sides as if my life was depending on it. Also the VR headset dug an even bigger hole for my already deep-set eyes. Thought I might look like a panda after I remove it.

 

*read from left to right.

also, Look at Little's score on bare hands. Should I be scared?

We had ice-cream after that and then it was home time. The next day, we decided to visit the bazaar near the Charminar, which is a historic site in Hyderabad for some shopping. The traffic though…I never want to visit again if I have to go through that kind of hassle. It was irritating beyond reasoning. But the shopping experience was good (Elder didn’t let me buy cat-eared ear-muffs and I will remember it. I tried throwing a tantrum too but I guess I am too old for it now.)

Overall, the break from monotony was much needed for all of us. Since I was gently reminded of my absolutely disgraceful abominable trash second-class second-rate laughable lamentable crummy rotten and pathetic decision of switching my stream from science to arts, this break felt deserved. Honestly though, the more I am reminded of how stupid my decision was by people who didn’t even have a peep in my life, the more I feel the urge to demolish them by proving them wrong ( ha-ha, look how incompetent the author is). Don’t ask me how I will demolish them because…well…I don’t know that myself, I guess? But anyways, thank you for sticking around to read my rhetoric rant at the end of this post. I hope I will be able to publish more stuff like I used to before but my schedule is jam-packed. But I will try my best. Thank you!