The Story of My Misfortunes

Have you ever kept exciting news to yourself, afraid to let it out into the world lest it get jinxed and things go inexplicably wrong when you least expect it? Are you the kind that treats good fortune with caution, keeping it under wraps, never indulging in it fully, lest someone someday casts their evil eye upon it, robbing you of your good times?

I wasn't. Up until last week, at least.

But I've learnt my lesson. There are evil spirits lurking in invisible corners round you, they do cast their malevolent eye on you whenever they think you might be enjoying yourself too much, and they are fully capable of jinxing situations in way that you would have never thought possible.

And in testimony to this undeniable fact is everything that has happened to me in the last one week. You already know the sob-story of my weight loss goals. And then, that trip that I'd been so excited about- didn't happen. Tickets booked, bags packed, hair done, hell, even the taxi cab to the airport booked, and then, lo, trip canceled due to some seriously crazy, unforeseeable circumstances.  So, I mop around for next few days, wistfully looking at my packed suitcase and conjuring up mental images of the mojito I might have been sipping by the beach, had things gone as planned. And then I think, hmmm, maybe a day in the city is just what I need to snap out of my moroseness, so I call a friend and plan to meet at Greenwich Village for burgers at the Corner Bistro.

Great plan, you'd think? What better way to cheer up than chomp down some greasy food and wash it down with beer? Aha, not so easy. You forget that I'm not exactly in the good books of of Lady Luck right now. Not surprisingly, we get lost, and go around the village in circles in the hot sun for TWO and a HALF hours. (Damn, I need to get that smartphone!).

And then, out of the blue, an unexpected stroke of good luck- in our quest for the Corner Bistro, we had stumbled upon another NY landmark that we'd been planning to visit for ages- the Magnolia Bakery, with their world-famous cupcakes! And that too, without the mile-long queue that is characteristic of most of the landmark eateries in the city. Burgers- forgotten. Cancelled trip- a thing of the past. Weight loss goals? Um, i have no idea what you are talking about. We closed in on the cupcakes with single-minded focus. There was not even the usual deliberation as to choose between flavors, we just picked everything we wanted to. It took us less a minute to polish of the last of the cupcakes. And it took exactly half that time for my body to react to them. In about thirty seconds time, my face had puffed up like a melon, my eyes like slits under the burgeoning eye-lids. Some crazy allergic reaction to egg yolks. Twenty four hours of popping pills, itching and near-blindness later, my eyes still look like this:

Still waiting for Lady Luck to relent.