So far...

Mr. Int was getting chased by the wife. He was running for his life and had heavy tennis racquets in his hand that were meant to bully the man of the house.


                                                        Episode - 2
The characters

Woman / Wife :  Lakshmi
Man / Husband / Mr. T(ennis) : Ravi
Mr. Int : The Intruder
Henchmen : The accomplices of Mr. Int
The Mystery Man: (Will be revealed later)


Seeing Mr. Int run, the wife started running behind him shouting, “Hey! Stop! I want to talk to you.” Mr. Int was inexplicably scared and ran shouting, “Chupacabra! Chupacabra!” (Spanish for Devil.) Unable to hold on to the heavier tennis racquets he had in his hands, he dropped a few of them and increased his speed. In panic, he forgot his escape route and took a wrong turn in the backyard and bumped in to a wooden shelf of some kind. The impact was so hard that it opened and a deluge of junk items stored inside that shelf came out and carried him like a hapless victim caught in a flash-flood. The wife came in very closer and was about to literally get hold of him. Years of marriage had her physically prepared well to grab a grown man by his collar. Mr. Int closed his eyes when the shadow of her fell on him and the long arms were about to grab him. All he heard was something foreign in language. The wife had lost her patience and was yelling at him in Hindi.

“Chupacabra! Chupacabra! Salvame Dios...Salvame dios!” He shouted in fear.
“Kaminey...Kaam teekh se karthe kyon nahin?” She screamed. “Paise vaapas dho.”
Even though the mistake was hers, without any intention of accepting the project scope being gone wrong, she tried to blame Mr. Int, showing the emergence of a true Indian Manager in her.

“Theri naani aayegi kya, ye sub kuch vaapas rackne keliye?” She was irritated on seeing the items from the old shelf lying around.

As the luck would have it, one of the items on the floor just got pushed by him when he tried to get up, to the spot where the sun light was at its maximum. The glitter from it blinded her eyes. She momentarily got distracted and that was enough for him get up and make his escape. She still did not pursue him. She had one of the tennis racquets in her hand. She could have simply hurled at him. The garden rake was just in her hand’s reach. She could have picked it up and tripped him. But she did not. Something about that glittering object stopped her. She bent down to take a closer look.

Meanwhile...

Mr. Int ran for his life outside on the side walk, towards the get-away car waiting for him. Sensing something went wrong and their buddy was in trouble, one of the henchmen waiting inside the car opened the right side back door to aid Mr. Int get inside quickly. The timing was so bad that he opened the door right at the time Mr. Int was very close and it banged right on his legs. “Dios, me perdone!” Mr. Int cried, shouting in pain. In that short moment, his hands went up and down, right to left multiple times, simulating the Latin Cross. Despite his pain he got in to the car and the car took off.

[Conversation in Spanish]
“What happened, my friend? What happened?” One of the henchmen in the back side of the car asked.
“Chupacabra! Chupacabra” Mr. Int still showed the sense of fear.
“What? Chupacabra? What did you see? Why are you so scared?”
“The woman who went out in the car...she was inside...” Mr. Int trembled.
“What? What? What?” Two other henchmen in the front joined the third one and responded in shock.
“Yes, honest to God. It was a woman inside the house. There was no man.”
“A woman or, ‘the’ woman who hired you? But, you did see the Prius leaving the house, right? Are you sure it was the wife who was in it? Perhaps, somebody else was driving the Prius. What is true my friend?” The one in the back asked again. His voice sounded like the man in the “Dos Equis” beer commercial.
“No...No...She said, she would make sure that her husband would be at home.” Mr. Int was still unconvinced. “I was very close to being caught. She could have really sent me to jail. To me, she must be the Lady Madonna who wanted me get away from this hellish life. I will light a candle for that wife everyday for rest of my life.”
“What about the tennis racquets?” Asked the driver.
“Forget it! I am a changed man. From now on, I will earn an honest living and serve the Indian people through my work. I will start with dosa parties for now.”
Hearing Mr. Int, the other three shouted in chorus: “No Amigo! No!”
“Why not?” Asked Mr. Int.
The henchman at the back put his hands on Mr. Int’s shoulders and in a friendly tone said, “Never serve the crazy Indian people...that too, never do the dosa parties. Do you know what happened to Rodrigo who lives in our neighborhood? He has gone nuts ever since he did a Dosa Party at an Indian house in the Mission side of Fremont!”

“Paz para el! Paz para el!” All prayed for Rodrigo. (Peace to him! Peace to him!)

Meanwhile...

At the house, the wife took the glittering object in her hand. It was a wrist watch! The moment she touched it, flashes of million images appeared in front of her. It was not the iPhone apps gone wrong. She knew it: it was a flash-back! The flash-back of the events that were so vivid, so livid, that it never lost the sense of time, that it was many Thanks Givings ago. To show her love for her man, she braved the cold on one Thanks Giving night for the “Black Friday” sale: her first such one. That night, her man made sure that she stayed warm by getting her the comforters from home. He got her foldable chairs from home to comfort her legs. He made sure that a warm place was always there -- their car -- by running the heaters on. And, the whole night he stayed inside to welcome her in at any moment. She did not. She was on a Mission. A Mission of love to get the wrist watch for her man. Her first gift as a thankful note to him. Though, he never accompanied her for any more Thanks Giving night outs, she kept on going for the following years in the hope that she would get that magical moment again in her life. She thought she had lost it -- not only that watch, but that magical moment. Getting that watch back was a sign. That wrist watch got her that magical moment back!  She looked up at the sky and did a sign like the wide receivers do after a touch down was made in the end zone. Realizing that she had made a mistake, she walked in to the house, straight to the pooja room and asked for forgiveness from God for making such a bad move on her man. (For those who are familiar with the Indian movies, it was like her walking in to a temple on a stormy night with the bells swinging wild and the doors to the sanctum were going open and shut. Bolts of lightning flashed on her, on and off. One of the bells strike her forehead and a streak of blood appeared like a Sindoor.)

“God...how could I misjudge him...” She cried.

For every step she made, the heated argument she had with her husband sounded in her ears like a voice from the sky.

“I will cut your [tennis] balls, if I ever see them in my vehicle...”

She heard her own voice ricocheting of the walls. Every time she heard the voice, she felt like being hit by the lightning. Horrified by the anger she had unleashed she cried in pain.
(Author’s note: Some more flair could be added to this from the personal experiences of the other well known “Pathi Sevthas”. Perhaps, dragging two children side by side and walking over broken chess pieces?)

Meanwhile...

The Prius approached a tennis court far away from home. Mr. T got down from the car, took his gear out from the trunk and walked towards the court. He saw his playing buddy -- Mystery Man to us -- waiting by the court side. Suddenly Mr. T did some stretching to expose his calves when a cute looking babe walked by. He did some push-ups when another cute looking babe in push-ups walked by.
“Tera raaz kya hai, Angres ki raani?” Joked his buddy about the woman who just passed by.
Mr. T smiled at his friend’s remark and asked, “Are you waiting here for a while? Sorry man, I got delayed.”
“It’s fine,” said the Mystery Man. “Did you get out the way you had planned?” He asked with a grin.
“But for the forced gas station run, everything was perfecto.” Mr.T gestured with his index finger placed over his thumb like a chef and exploded with his signature laugh.
“I did send the mail on time, didn’t I?” asked the Mystery Man.
“Without a good manager like you, I don’t know how I could have kept my wife to shut up,” said Mr. T. “One e-mail every half hour, that is simply amazing! How do you do this? Marvelous man!” He could not control his curiosity.
“I was in Cisco before for many years. This is what I did being a manager there.”
“Holy Cow!” Exclaimed Mr. T.
“Shall we start our play?”
“How many sets? 3 or 5?”
“Let us do 5. I got enough emails to send to keep your wife busy the whole day.”
Mr. T and his buddy put their pinky over their lips and did a Dr.Evil laughter.
“uhaaah...haaahhh”
The laughter was heard miles away.