A Fool’s what a Fool does!

The past couple of days have been a complete disaster for me where much to my dismay I have been performing one foolish act followed by another. By publicly admonishing myself I hope to drill down some sense into what seems to be an impenetrably thick skull I have.
Lets start with scene one, last Monday I had yet another inconspicuous shave; so what could go so wrong in this seemingly regular activity one may ask? Well here I have to confess that in the past I had senselessly been thrifty with the use of shaving lotion and after shave (Foolish act No 1) leading to a lot of what I choose to describe a minutest puss boils (due my ignorance). It took three such occurrences (don’t ask me why so long I only have my own a** to kick) to make the connection and take corrective steps, in addition I also stated using a bit of dettol on my face and like magic it started to work. Not only that it seemed to me then that it also had some positive effect on the acme I had (How wrong I was). Encouraged by this deduction (which would later unfold as a disaster) I allowed myself to be flattered as a one above the so-called dermatologist’s (Foolish act No 2) and subsequently applied quite lavish quantities of Dettol on my face after shaving (Foolish act no 3). Not stopping with this I went on to add not little after-shave over and above the dettol already applied.

By now I guess you should have some got inkling on what followed (on Tuesday)? Well my skin started to react quite badly with the dettol and after-shave and what more, here I hazard to postulate that it (my poor skin) died and formed patches of black layers all over my face. Now this was frightening, with what face would I attend the upcoming B school interviews? Completely psyched I could not sleep properly. Add to all this the fact that my brother (Devil would be more apt) Sriram very uncharitably (and imprecisely) taunted that I looked like an Orc from the Lord of the Rings movie. All I could do was to curse myself for having bought the CD so that he could watch the movie (Foolish act no 4).

Thankfully by the next morning the worst was behind me (or so I thought) and the dead patches were peeling off. Beneath them the skin was fresh and even better than what it was earlier. In a state of exuberance and almost inebriated state I started to peel off the remaining black patches eager to get back at the little devil (Foolish act no 5). Here I learnt a lesson on the virtue of patience, it transpired that I had been hasty and acted prematurely on some patches and pulled them out even before they were fully healed. One such spot was slightly to the right of my lip. It was what to say burning a bit reddish and over all not a big deal would have healed in a day or two. But alas that was not to be, in my ridiculously incompetent, deluded, insane mind some how a preposterous idea took root. Don’t even bother to think how I could think of such things, it beats me. What did I do I applied dettol again on the spot, yes you read it right dettol (the root cause that stated it all) again (Foolish act no 6). No prizes for guessing the end result, the moment I made contact a burning sensation took over and a black mark took its place. Reddish black would be more accurate.

With this nasty feeling of irrevocable damage do I went to office today morning. Now this reddish black mark was so conspicuous that every body who knew me or had even a slightest of acquaintance with me (Now I had quite a few of those) almost automatically spit out that question which started to haunt me the whole day where ever I went. What happened to my face? Now I felt here that the true story was too complicated and sounded too foolish, (which is true). So what did I do? Invented a equally moronic story (Told them that the after-shave I use caused a reaction (Foolish act no 7). Now what I dint anticipate here was the barrage of question’s that followed. What after-shave? Where did you buy it? Why did it happen? When? How? Jeez give me a break. But no to cover up one lie I had to invent many more. Now I could not answer the what question with out my conscience accusing me of slander against a brand. So I told them that the after-shave was a counterfeit (I could not tell them a cheap local brand, as it may lead to a conclusion that I was cheap). Then followed the where question, here I managed to wrrigle myself out by answering "vituku pakatla local kada machi! " ="A local shop near my house brother". One would expect that they would leave things as such there and proceed with their work but no (leading me to conclude that work is scanty if at all any). At this point many would educate me about the existence of a consumer court. How to file a case, where to file. Lecture to me about the need for consumer awareness. Narrate anecdotes of how people spent just Rs 10,000 and earned compensation of 1,00,000. Some even went on to offer help in finding a suitable lawyer. And when I finally convinced them that I was not planning to file a case in consumer court (much to their dismay) they finally were kind enough to enlighten me about the various after-shaves in the market and gave testimonials about the effectiveness of many of these. Only then was I let to part, all too often to be intercepted by another person and I had to endure another round of well intentioned but annoying questioning and advice. Note here I cannot change my original story to the truth as that would lead to inconsistencies which I thought was even more dangerous than lying as it may lead to a further bout of explanations for which I had no appetite.

Finally with my tail between my legs I left office early today (had the misfortune of being spotted by a manager, darn! Why don’t I have any luck), went to the skin doctor got a cream and some reassurance that things would be sorted out in a week on its own, if not he would prescribe a steroid or some other cream.

Now completely gassed as bhavan’s school buddies would describe my state and no one to share my feelings (thanks to the bright idea of lying in office) I write this post. Hope I recover and recuperate from the horrific time (I call this the Fool syndrome) I’ve had in the past 3 days. Already I feel sleepy so am off to bed hopefully tomorrow brings better news.