Hilarious Short Story – COMEDY OF ERRORS
Photo credit: xenia from morguefile.com
We all have heard the usage comedy of errors. I have a story that can be best described as a comedy of errors. My story.
I am an honest police officer who has an uncanny knack of saying the right things at the wrong time or wrong things at the right time or wrong things at the wrong time or … well you got my point. And as a result of that I am shuttled between traffic and law and order.
Once I was on escort duty for a minister passing by. As far as I remember I likened him to an animal that Maneka Gandhi is particularly found of. To my misfortune, my walkie-talkie was on. That piece of equipment has never worked whenever it was required to. But at that precise moment it worked like clockwork and the entire police force heard my remark. You can assume what would have followed.
I can cite numerous such episodes. The same minister was passing by two weeks later and I waved at him and got suspended. Now one would wonder why I got suspended for simply waving. Well technically I didn’t use all my fingers, just one.
In fact waving ( the conventional type) has got me into trouble before also. Once I was on a very important duty that concerns national security. To fine those who are riding without helmets. As I was busy handling out receipts and the visiting card of my cousin who runs an helmet shop to erring riders, the constable minding traffic had an emergency. So I took over the traffic till he returned. His emergency was to talk to his wife who was passing by for shopping. It was an emergency by all means because that women’s idea of shopping was not going to the shop but bringing the shop to home. As I grew restless I waved at him to come back. The people in the traffic thought it was my cue to go and they all went into first gear. The next thing I remember is receiving my suspension order duly attested by my superior.
My life progressed without much fuss for a while. My wife was expecting and I was also expecting. I was expecting a promotion as I was doing reasonably well for some time now and going by my history that was no mean feat. But my service book was dipped in red. Still I expected I would get the raise. I also wanted to talk about my leave as my wife is pregnant. So I went to see my superior. When I went in to see him, I wobbled a bit.
Me – “Sir , I am pregnant”.
Superior – “well, it’s about time”.
Me – “no. sir I meant my wife is pregnant. I would like to take a month’s leave”.
Superior – “forget about leave. We have an important case now. The briefing will begin in 5”.
It took him just 30 seconds to throw my plea for leave out of the window. We all sat for the briefing about this new supposedly highly confidential case. My colleagues were murmuring and laughing when they heard I am about to become a dad. One guy even suggested I should name the baby ‘LOL’ and high- fived the guy next to him. I wanted to high-five him on his face.
The meeting started and it was based on a report from the Intelligence Bureau. It was about a guy named Gabbar Pandey. He was in our watch list for quite some time now. He was involved in match fixing, betting, money laundering and all other activities which you find in the resume of an underworld don. But we never had conclusive proof to nab him. The IB report was like the homework of a 4 year old. Not very clear and the authenticity is always in doubt. The report said he is planning an operation in Mumbai. A very dangerous operation . He has named it Operation Myfoot.
That’s all the report said. It’s something very important to him and can be catastrophic. The IB’s job was over. Now all they have to do is wait and when something happens claim they already informed us. It was up to us to decipher what it was. Our chief implicitly mentioned whoever finds it out will get a promotion. As nothing was conclusive , we could not make it public. The report also mentioned a date. 20th of this month. So operation myfoot was planned for 20th October. A week from now.
We all sat down trying to crack the case. As I was going through the newspaper, there was a news on the sports page that world’s greatest leg-spinner Shame Worn is visiting India. I went through other news and put the paper aside. I took it again and read the sports page. He is coming on 20th of this month. The day of Operation Myfoot. I started thinking. Myfoot – foot – leg – leg spinner. Operation Myfoot is to assassinate Shame Worn. I cracked it. I immediately informed the chief and his initial reaction was surprise. He soon gathered his team and started handing out instructions. We should follow Shame Worn. Then I asked and I regretted it as soon as the words left my mouth “ Is he on twitter?”.
“Not on twitter you fool. In real.” In came the reply
“We should get a full schedule of his activities here in India”
“ but sir if he comes to know there is a threat to his life he will tweet ‘ India su*ks’ and catch the next flight. How will we explain to the minister” I suggested
Chief – “Then follow him”
Me – sir…
Chief – “on twitter. He keeps updating every 5 minutes. We will know from that. He has a girlfriend lux curley. Follow her too. And keep a tail on Gabbar Pandey”
Everybody was working with added impetus for the next few days. Gabbar was not giving anything away. We got the sanction to tap his phone pretty late. And he kept saying operation Myfoot should happen at any cost.
So came the much awaited or rather dreaded 20th. Shame Worn arrived with his girlfriend and we kept stalking his twitter account. His first tweet after reaching was “ landed in India. Very hot. It su*ks”. His tweet said he has a training session in the cricket academy in the afternoon. We deployed some policemen in civil dress there and did a thorough search of the vicinity. I was handed the responsibility of monitoring his tweets as putting me in the field was not a risk worth taking according to my chief.
Then as we were anxiously monitoring the situation, I got a call that my wife is in hospital with labour pain. As I had twitter app on my phone, I immediately rushed to the hospital, checking for tweets in between. It was a false alarm and we hit snooze and discharged from the hospital. As we were leaving I saw Gabbar Pandey being stretchered out of the ICU. I asked a nurse as to what happened to him. She said he just had surgery in his right foot. Operation Myfoot was a success.
__END__
