The Wallet with a Hole

On my last birthday, I happened to get a wallet and a shirt along with some other tidbits as a gift from my colleagues at office. The wallet reminded me of one incident on my last visit to Bangalore.

Ah! Bangalore. There aren't many souls alive who could resist, when the garden city, with her myriad colors and seductive charms welcomes him, with outstretched hands into her lovely cosmopolitan bosom. Sadly, as is the way with any other pretty mistress, too much indulgence with her gifts could leave you a poor old pauper. More so if you're still a student tugging at your parent's purse strings for subsistence. This precisely summed up my plight then, leaving me with few alternatives to ogling and window shopping. Still, too much of the same thing would be boring. Having had enough of the pointless strolls through umpteen shopping malls, I picked my spot. A worn down shop at the end of the road - they sold leather goods.

I was feeling very important. Clad in my odd rainbow colored shirt and tattered jeans, I would have been far from being a fashion statement. I am not telling you that it would be much better if I had worn perfect-fit suits tailored just for me from Suavecito’s. It wouldn’t have been any better. But somehow, I just feel that way on certain occasions-On the walk back to the bus stop after watching a stylish Mohanlal performance in a movie, or after watching a sizzling innings from Sachin Tendulkar, or a jaw dropping dance number from Michael Jackson-the infectious energy of the hero sort of rubs off on me, and it translates into me feeling important and my walk metamorphoses into a SRK-sque swagger. Quite often such idiocies of mine do not last much long, and they end up rudely jolted by some "external entity"(Mostly a reflective car window glass or mirror) and my swagger mutates back into my usual commonplace walk.

So, I swaggered in. I expected to be ushered in by the archetypal fawning salesman, who makes you feel as if you don’t dissuade him immediately, he would bend down and lick your boots clean, then and there. Instead there stood a guy, brashly confident and with a couldn’t-care-less look on his face. And boy, he had killer looks too, with wavy brown locks, hazel blue eyes, red blazer and faded jeans looking every inch the fashion statement that I was talking about,above.And he happened to be my "external entity" for the day. I didn’t even need half a glance at the guy to decide that I would hate him for the remaining part of my life.

Listen, you self-assured and confident ladies and gentlemen who think highly of yourselves, I despise each one of you. You make me feel cornered; you make me stammer for words, you make me nervous like hell, and you stroke the most primitive of complexes in me. If I can afford to, I intend to give you the cold shoulder, nine times out of ten.

"What do you want?" He barked, interrupting my thoughts. Damn me. I hadn't decided upon what to buy, totally lost in my thoughts and my seething hatred for him. I took a glance around, and decided that I would buy the smallest thing there, a wallet.
"A wallet", I blurted out.He took me to a corner and showed me the wallets. He did that with such grace, elegantly flipping the wallets one by one for me to see. It was a sight, when with slender, strong fingers; he took each wallet, placed it back onto the table and took the next one, and all in one single smooth motion of the hand. For each one he quoted the price with a chaste English accent which would have made any convent educated snob go green with envy. I felt a grudging admiration for him, and hated him even more.
"Three hundred, Four hundred, Two hundred fifty..." he rattled off.
I realized I couldn't buy a wallet, unless I decided to take to the pavements with my new wallet for company. I just stared at him, expecting myself to look like a seasoned bargainer, waiting for him to finish.
"Too high". I said, shaking my head in displeasure.
"Three hundred fifty, Four hundred...".He went on, as if he had better business than paying attention to me.

Meanwhile I just took up one wallet and scrutinized it. And I discovered something! There was a hole right in the centre of the wallet, a big gaping hole. Even a blind man would not miss it. And the crook was trying to sell it for Two-hundred-fifty bucks!
"How much did you tell this one costs?" I asked. My tone was so victorious, foreseeing the way the arrogant fellow would be stammering, profusely apologizing and trying to find a hundred excuses when I would show him the hole.
"Two-hundred and Fifty ".
"Won’t go down?" I asked, mockingly.
"Pure leather. Fixed price." He snapped as if he was reciting some ad catchword for the wallet he was holding.
"Ok."

Yes. I was going to flatten him now. I braced myself for the moment. I brought up the wallet to his eye-level, flipped it open and thrust the hole right in front of his eyes, all in slow motion. I congratulated myself. I had seized my moment like all great people do, acting rightly and at the right time, aided by a lavish dose of luck which gave me this opportunity.

"Hey Mister, what’s this, then?" I asked, sneering, pointing animatedly at the hole in the wallet. It was my turn to snap now.To my horror, the bastard didn’t flinch. He continued staring at me as if I was crazy.
"What's this hole? And you want to sell this for two-hundred and fifty rupees?" I stressed the words fifty and rupees, deliberately rolling the ‘f’ and the ‘r’, so that I could sound more menacing. Seeing his reaction, I was angrier and less confident, but the thought of the impending victory pepped me up.

I looked him, in the eye. I couldn’t read the expression on his face then. It might have been contempt, pity or maybe as if he had given up on me. He took the wallet from my hand and placed it down.
"I guess you've never seen a wallet in your life". He said, and with the same dexterity with which he had done earlier, he passed all the wallets through his hands once again, flipping each of them open in the process. I couldn’t believe my eyes. In each one of them, right in the centre, there was the hole.

In every wallet there is a hole in the centre, I came to realize later, so that before stuffing the wallet into our pocket, we can wrap it into two, around that hole. I hoped in vain, for genies, to materialize out of nowhere and swallow me up, for the earth to crack open and pull me down into its bowels. Nothing of that sort happened. Somehow, I managed to mutter something like it was too expensive or the quality of the wallet was abominable, I don’t remember what. With a lot of effort I dragged my feet out of the shop, going through what seemed the longest two minutes of my life, pretending not to hear the peals of laughter erupting behind me. I had just discovered a novel method to make a fool of myself.

Later, with my friends, I recounted this incident and we had a good laugh over it. Even now, when we friends get together, and recollect things ranging from old blunders to sweet old love affairs, over bottles of beer and champagne, this still remains one incident which leaves us all grinning from ear to ear.