I don’t believe this has happened to me. One moment I was sitting there enjoying the view and the cool sea breeze and the next thing I knew, she had walked away, just like that, walked away without even a backward glance, leaving me all alone. Now, WHAT am I supposed to do?! Call out to her? Run after her? Kick her in the butt? If only I could, kick her in the butt, I mean.

Sorry, I know this is all rather confusing for you all. You are her friends, readers as she calls you. You come by, read what she writes and praise her sky high. Ha! I bet you didn’t know she has this dark side to her that leaves those who depend on her stranded out in the nowhere. And to think she did not spare me one single backward glance as she walked away. *Sob sob*

Okay. I will cut down the drama and start right at the beginning, where every good story should start. Oh not according to good old know-it-all-Shail. She thinks a story can start just about anywhere. Well, she has her ways, I have mine. Errr… ummm…come to think of it, I had unknowingly adopted her ways when I began. But now, I go to the beginning, and tell my story, mind you a sad one at that, my way.

My earliest memory is of being taken out of a box, being wiped gingerly, and put on what I later came to know was a display pedestal. I looked to my left and to my right and found classy dudes and dudettes of my sort lolling around stylishly. Boy, were they good looking! We were all in what they called a shop and waiting for ‘customers’ to come in and ‘buy’ us, or so said the oldies. Our purpose was to protect their eyes from the rays of the sun. I was raring to go sit on one of them glamorous faces and do some real protecting of eyes.

As luck would have it, many glamorous young faces came in, checked me out and left me for better ones. Sigh. Then along came this lady called Shail (Of course I did not know her name then. But I hear now that she has various aliases one of them being Shutterbug Lady. Hrmmmmmphh), who tried a couple of us on and asked her niece for an opinion and getting a favourable response, settled on me. That was it. I was out of the shop, started adorning her mug and doing my duty of protecting her eyes (and lending some style too) from then on.

That had been in 2008 in Vadodara. Since then I have been to a lot of places, protecting Shail Madamji’s (hyuk hyuk) eyes from the rays of the sun at different geographical locations: Trivandrum, Bangalore, Delhi, San Francisco, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, Bali et al. Last week, when she stuffed me into her bag I was thrilled. I somehow knew it in my frames that I was going on a long journey, crossing the seas. Sure enough, it was a long haul. The next thing I knew I was whizzing along the freeway from San Francisco to Sunnyvale. Yippeeee.

On Saturday, there I was, on her near perfect nose that was once almost hit out of shape by her Lord & Master (link) and on a joyride. I sat in her bag while she hogged  Spicy Catfish, Mango Chicken and Ginger-garlic rice at the Thai place. And of course guzzling Thai iced tea, one of her favourites! Then once more I made myself comfortable on the bridge of her nose as we pulled out of the parking lot and were on our way, settling myself down to do my job.

Soon we were at the picturesque location of Half Moon Bay. Did you know it used to be originally called San Benito, then was renamed Spanishtown and finally ended up being Half Moon Bay? Anyway, it is a beautiful bay. There were lot of picnicking families, and aroma of stuff being barbecued floated around. There were swimmers and surfers in the blue sea. There were many jogging, or walking their dogs. The distant hills had a thin veil of fog covering it, making it look mysterious. It was nice and sunny day with a cool breeze.

I took in all the sights sitting on her unruly mop (Gawd, she has turned into a regular golliwog these days as far as her hair goes) of curly hair. Yup, she had pushed me off the nose, and on to her head by then. Anyways, she had, as is expected of her, started clicking the many birds, gulls, the sea, the hills, the flora and whatnot while walking along. She spent some time sitting on a bench enjoying the sea air and talking to her First Born, even took a picture of his. Then polite that the son is, he offered to take one of hers. That’s when it happened.

She took me off my perch on her head and laid me to rest beside her bag to pose for the photo. I happily sat there enjoying the bracing sea air. There was a dear little doggie named Murphy, a Golden retriever if I remember correctly, who was prancing around and being asked by the Mistress to hurry up. Some gulls were dipping and soaring. So much to entertain me, and nary a thought of trouble brewing! What DO you think the dumbo did? She grabbed her bag, slung it over her shoulder and walked away, just like that, leaving me alone.

Yes, this is my sad story. The sun has set, it is getting quite chilly. Brrrr….. The wind is picking up and whipping up a frenzy… OMG! OMG! I am airb..o…rrrr…..nnnnn……….eeeeee. Helllpppppp! Hellllppppppp! Hellllpppppppppp……!!!!!!!!! *voice gently fades away*