Dear Embarassment,

There is only so much embarassment you can go through in a day, and still come out of it with your smile intact. Embarassing situations and I, we're buddies! We've crossed paths so often that now all I can do is laugh. I remember this one time in school; this school had a no uniform policy, so we could wear whatever the hell we felt like, and obviously that didn't work out. So, one day I decided to wear a shirt that had a zipper instead of buttons on it, (to imagine, an aunt actually gifted that shirt to me-what was she thinking, seriously?!) and that dreadful decision would lead me to embarassment of titanic proportions. During lunch break, I'm just hanging out with my girls and suddenly a rather naughty friend of mine decides to have some fun at my expense. She pretends to play with the zipper and before I know it, she's totally unzipped it. My dignity literally flew away like a little canary escaping a crocodile's mouth. It took me a while to register what had just happened, actually it was more like a few seconds and a few aghast looks, sounds of snickering and some shameless laughter. My hands flew to the sides of my now open shirt and I brought it together, got the other girls to cover me and I put my zip up, pretending as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. I do remember laughing about it too. Simply because, if given the chance I would've done the same to someone else. That was just one example of my humiliation. And there have been many.

It seems like I invite this embarassment to myself. Since my brain doesn't function normally, my mouth clearly has no stopper, my hands randomly grope things, my bum starts to do the hippy shake at odd times; and off late I've found that I do that typical Bollywood breast-thrust at the most inappropriate times. Seriously, what is wrong with me? The upside of this, though, is that it does make people laugh, even fits of laughter commence from my rather obscene behaviour.

Today, I was at a friend's mehendi/sangeet and the most hilarious thing happened. I think wedding photographers have the best job in the world. The fact that they can manipulate someone like my friend- who could be rather stubborn and who would've said years ago that she would never pose a certain way during her wedding- to pose for such horrendous, cringe-worthy, laughable photos. This guy gets my friend to pose against a wall, her palms flat on the wall and her leg slightly up the length of the wall. From my standpoint it looked like she was humping the wall. To make things worse, the photographer calls the groom and asks him to stand behind my friend-the-bride, with his hands on her shoulder and it seriously looked like he was doing to her what she was doing to the wall. It was hillarious. And of course, since my brain or vocal chords have no filter, my joke was doing the rounds soon enough. It's safe to say it kept us entertained all night. Another instance of embarassment of comical proportions. I can only thank Merlin that it wasn't me this time!

But I didn't have to wait long. Merlin got back with a vengeance.

The first embarassment of the day was rather humiliating and a story I would rather not write about, only because it didn't have any humour in it. But the second one was entertaining. Knowing very well that I have severe stage fright, I still signed up for the dance at the sangeet. Three practice sessions later, I was still copying every move the friend-bride made, including the steps that were ONLY for her. Luckily though, I got to share this embarassment with another friend. We both ended up making a whole bunch of mistakes and burst out laughing in the middle of the dance. To top that off, our friends were sitting on the side watching us and laughing their fannies off. Every now and then, we would glance in their direction and watching them laugh would make us break into giggles. It was mental! I was red in the face, all flushed with the routine and the laughing, and the embarassment of having messed up and laughed on the stage in front of a room full of people. But, it was the most fun I had in quite sometime and I even kind of lost a bit of that stage fright. I was dhan tana-ing away the rest of the night.

So if I've learned anything from embarassing situations, it is this- Embarassing situations exist because they definitely attract this funny little thing called Laughter. And what would we do without laughter in our lives eh?! So, Embarassment, you're welcome for a cup of tea, anytime! Looking forward to seeing you soon. Ciao!