Alarming.

Home is where mishaps are. Especially for a mishap-prone person. Like me. Take his morning, for instance. I’m supposed to leave 541 Sayre Drive, Princeton with Nandini to while away 4 hours at Barnes & Noble at the Market Fair mall. It’s drizzling outside. At the last minute, I change my mind and decide to do a bit of writing at home instead. Nandini leaves for work. I get myself some pineapple juice and cereal. After working on my writing assignment for a couple of hours in the basement, I lie down in bed reading and nod off to a not-too-deep sleep. Suddenly, footsteps on the upper staircase nudge me half awake. I’m not quite sure if I really heard them. I get up, walk up from the basement and try to open the garage door. The security alarm goes into an overdrive with the siren wailing loud enough to wake up the dead, let alone the slightly groggy me. I get a call from the security company to enquire if all’s well. I say Yes. The siren continues to wail. In due course, firemen and cops arrive. In the meanwhile, my repeated attempts to get in touch with Nandini and retrieve the code to put the fire alarm off are in vain. Finally, she arrives in person quite perturbed. Apologies are offered and the mystery gets solved. The footsteps I heard earlier were Aditi’s. She came to get her iPod, found the fire alarm was off and, thinking nobody was home, turned it on along with the motion sensor. Had I continued with my snooze, stayed put and not gone up to investigate, there would have been no problem. Well, the mishap had to happen. And, like it or not, it did.