Daily Blunder | Poster Blues

This happened four days back, on Wednesday.

Hectic preparations for Aagneya ’09 were on. Being a member of the core-team, I had to be present at the Aagneya Room all the while (well, when classes aren’t going on, that is!). That day, everyone was preoccupied with some job or the other. Including our unofficial ‘Staff-advisor’, Robin ‘Sir’. That left me forlorn in the A/C room with a couple of Sony VAIOs and tonnes of work to do. The posters had just arrived from the printers and were scattered all about the table. Cleanliness freak that I am, I stacked them all up and shoved them into the draw. The posters were a tad big, so I had to make some effort to stash them inside.

It was then that I remembered that my bag was still in class. Leaving the room in charge of Govind – a friend and Aagneya team member, I rushed back to the class and got back with the bag. Meanwhile, I got a phone call from another friend and about fifteen minutes had passed when I got back, only to see this arbit guy listening to a particularly-arrogant tamil number in the lappie – much to my chagrin! I shoved him out of the room and resumed work. That was when these guys from the Invitation Team came up, asking for fresh posters as they had run out of stock. I asked them to wait and opened the draw.

I had the shock of my life. The posters and brochures were missing!!!

Trying to keep my calm, I double-checked all three drawers. I emptied the contents of all three and rechecked. Nada.

Unnerved and panicked, I called everyone up. No one had a clue about the missing brochures. Soon, most of the core-committee reassembled in the room and started a wild goose chase. Even after 15 minutes of wild-search, not a shred of the poster was to be found. We tried phoning up everybody who was seen in the vicinity of the room. Everybody had a tailor-made “No”. All of us lost our mood, and started swearing at our sheer bad luck on what was already a train-wreck of a day. I was desperate, on the verge of a breakdown. 36 posters, simply vanished into thin air! Could anyone have stolen it? Duh! But what would one get from a set of printed brochures? Still, some of us were skeptical. We had already lost a diary with vital contacts. Could this just be a coincidence?

In all the hullaballoo, no one noticed Jagan crawling down, pulling something down from underneath the table. It was white in colour, glossy and was green on the other end.

It was an Aagneya poster. Mystified, we lifted the table, only to realize the gaffe.

Apparently the drawers in the table were too small to accomodate the 60cm-long poster. As I’d shoved all 36 of them into a single draw, they fell down through the hole behind the drawer and lay safe on the floor.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. I quitely slipped out of the room, beetroot red in embarrasment! 🙂