A year-end story

As 2007 winds down, I decided to put down this story I heard about a couple, who are our friends.

Though both of them are the same vintage as I, they give one a complex with their constant drinking from the fountain of youth, and their refusal to reveal its location. Both of them probably have to literally look up to Sachin Tendulkar as well. Add to all this their charm, inquisitiveness and natural sense of wonderment and you have a couple who appear to have stopped their watches at the age of 14 or thereabouts.

If this is what they look like now, one can imagine what they must have looked like about 15 years ago, when they were just married and driving down to visit their relatives in one of the smaller towns. Just before reaching town, they thought it would be a good idea to freshen up and present themselves as the radiant, stunning couple they are. Finding reasonable hostelry - at Chinnakallupalli? Bodinayakanur? One of those quaintly pastoral towns, anyway - they left their luggage in the car and taking the bare essentials for dolling up, approached the inn-keeper. I wasn't told what he was like, but I can picture a crisp, spotless-white veshti, white mull shirt, a 'thundu' over his left shoulder, the typical 'ooruku periavar'. One look at the two of them approaching, dishevelled and dusty, his mind was made up. No rooms.

But the couple wasn't about to take that refusal lying down. Gentle persuation and pleading (I'm sure that's what they used, can't picture them ranting and raving) melted the heart that was surely whiter than the mull shirt. Reaching for the register with a smile, he inquired how long they needed the room for. "One hour", said they. That did it. "Out, out of here, before I call the police!" he fumed, indignant at such casualness.

Until today, no one has apparently had the heart to tell them that the inn-keeper was completely justified.