There’s a Malayalam saying, “Chakkinu vechathu kokkinu kondu,” which means that you intended or aimed an action at a specific target or outcome, but it ended up hitting a completely different target or producing an entirely unexpected result.

Recently, much to my secret amusement, something similar happened.

After many years of not knowing each other’s whereabouts, I connected with an old college mate—much junior to me—on Facebook a couple of years ago.

Back in our college days, she used to be a big fan of mine. Junior girls idolise seniors, I know, though why me is beyond my comprehension. Really! What did anyone—especially this vivacious chit of a girl—see in someone who always had her nose buried in books? Beats me. Suffice it to say, she had been a fan.

When we reconnected on social media, I discovered that she had honed her skill of leg-pulling to perfection and turned it into an art form. What made it even more commendable was that she didn’t mind being at the receiving end either, which is more than I can say about a lot of people who make fun of others.

Her one ‘weakness’, if I may call it that, is her love for being photographed. Whenever I am around, she treats me as her personal photographer. Yeah, she no longer treats me like the awesome senior I used to be to her, but as an equal. But who’s complaining? Not me.

When I am not around, her modus operandi is to ask random, kind strangers to take her picture. Not surprisingly, many of those photographs don’t turn out quite right—according to me, of course. In some she looks short; in others, she looks tall, like a giraffe minus the long neck, as I have told her disdainfully. Why hadn’t she sent them to me so that I could rectify the perspective, I have asked her too many times.

In response, she would merely shrug, not really caring.

In the true spirit of our back-and-forth ribbing, I made fun of her in a recent Facebook post after seeing her nth giraffe-y picture. The new ‘fad’ of wanting to look like a long-legged giraffe with its neck squashed in—that’s what I called it.

She sent me an atrocious message, calling me all sorts of names, all of them funny. Both of us ended up doubling up with laughter as we exchanged messages.

And now, at last, we get to the chakkinu vechathu kokkinu kondu part of the story.

Apparently, my post, aimed at this friend of mine—the chakku in this case—touched a nerve in someone else who assumed it was about her. And so she became the unintended victim, the kokku from the saying.

But this is nothing new to me. I have encountered this particular kind of misunderstanding before. It is almost as if some people are waiting to get offended by something without first bothering to check whether it was even meant for them.

To them, I have had only one thing to say, and I’ll repeat it in this case too:

If the shoe fits, wear it.

©️ Shail Mohan 2026