Murphy's Law always happens to me

Samarjit Kambam *

When you are in a hurry, waiting impatiently by the side of the road for an autorikshaw, have you ever found yourself in a logjam where the autorikshaw comes packed with even no space to breath but you have to jam inside as time is running out on you?

The passengers alongwith you, like sardines packed in a can picks up momentum as the autorickshaw starts to move, but when you look back, have you came across a situation where you observe an empty autorikshaw in tandem with the one you are on?

Then you'd curse and swear to yourself that if you had waited for five seconds, you could have comfortably seated inside the passenger vacant auto following next to the auto in which you are taking a ride. Likewise, have you come across situations, when a slice of bread fall down by slipping from your hand, the side of the bread smeared with butter or jelly always faces the floor? You also might have come across situations where guests enter your house only when everything's scattered around and unorderly.

If a mother wears black, her kid will most probably have a running nose; if she wears white, her kids will have higher chances of getting muddy hands; if she mops the floor, they will spill something, if she wears new shoes, she accidentally steps on spilled things. Again, time flies by quickly during good times such as going for a picnic or going on a date, not while you are working hard. If you are successful, most of the time it happens in private, but when you are a failure, it happens in full public view.

The abovementioned incidents do happen in real life, if not to all people on earth, but to some people. And to some people the frequency of such incident where you feel like a wrong person at the wrong place and time do happens. It may be co-incidence, by chance or if you are a religious, it may be the doings of the Almighty playing fun on you.

Such real life incidents or situations are called Murphy's Law. The law's namesake was Capt. Ed Murphy, a development engineer from Wright Field Aircraft Lab, United States. Murphy's Law is an epigram that states that "If anything can go wrong, will go wrong".

Based on the matter, let me recall a recent incident. Me, my younger brother and my mother set out from home for marketing. We dropped our mother at the market with she holding a big bag so that she could purchase the items of her choice from the market. We then told her we will be back in ten minutes as we started to head northwards. She commanded us to come soon as waiting is the most arduous or herculean task to her.

Both of us then headed to the nearby chicken cum duck centre to buy naked, sorry, dressed and cut duck. But on that particular day, the ducks ran out of stock. When we asked the owner of the shop for any other option, he told us the place.

He directed us to "Go straight towards the southern side of the main road. See that white van being parked? Nearby there's a small street, go for about 200 metres, you will see a banyan tree, then turn right, go for further 100 metres, again turn left, go for about 50 metres, there you'll see a house with a green gate.

The name of the owner's house is Mr Munal. He rears about 50 ducks. There you can choose the duck of your choice". We then found out that the street was a god forsaken one, it was too small for a four wheeler to pass through. We reached 'destination Munal' on foot and more than 10 minutes had already consumed.

Knocking the gate, finding out that Mr Munal was unavailable and being accompanied by his wife took us another 5 minutes. We were shown the flock of ducks of different varieties and colours near a big pond. When we went closer, all the ducks dived into the pond like swimmers of an Olympiad only that they did not somersault.

Maybe, by instinct they might have known that they were about to be caught. The lady threw stones and tried her best to make the ducks climb up from the pond, but to no avail. Then, using a long stick she shooed them but the flock of ducks were going round and round the pond like hovercrafts.

Seeing the futility of the situation, we joined her but the situation turned out more like searching for a needing among a big stack of scattered hay. As if that were not enough, it started to rain. The ducks seemed to be enjoying the rain giving us a really hard time. Meanwhile, my mother rang up and asked us what the hell took us so long.

I replied that we were almost on our return journey. Lastly, the lady's daughter joined us and with great effort we managed to make them climb up from the pond. The lady then directed them towards a corner. We managed to catch one white one, paid the price of the fateful duck to the lady and returned back to the chicken cum duck centre.

To our dismay, we found the owner busy playing cards with his friends and we have to wait for another 20 minutes for him to finish as he couldn't abruptly stop in the middle of the game. After losing about 2000 INR, he was dispersed from the group and the ironical thing was that he had forgotten to boil water. So, like hearing a long story from the beginning we waited till he did the needful which took another half an hour.

Meantime, mother's phone rang incessantly. She was cursing and shouting and asking us in which part of the world we were. After the duck was dressed till it got naked and cut into pieces, we drove towards our mother like hell. But when we reached our destination, she was no longer there for she had already climbed on an autorickshaw as she could not take it any longer. Then, we thought we were tangled in the hook of Murphy's Law.

Most of the time, whenever I go to an ATM, there'd always be along queue and when my turn comes, the money would get exhausted. The time spent during the queue was wasted and didn't bear any result. Again, no matter how long or hard I shop for an item, after I have bought the item, I always used to find the same item on sale somewhere cheaper.

Such things always happens to me. Maybe I am destined to Murphy's Law or maybe nature always sides with hidden flaws. Well, lets never underestimate the power of human stupidity, most particularly, a for stupid human like me.