The Trial-room

At the mall, you cannot pick up a new shirt or pant and head home, based on just the color and the size-number. Different brands have a different fitting. It is important to try out the clothes.

Trial-rooms in malls are busy places. About 4-5 trial-rooms are stacked in a row. However, contenders for these rooms are many. Time is at a premium- you must be sensitive and eject quickly, when it is your turn.

Trial-room usage follows a particular drill. You ask your wife and children to wait just outside the trial-room area. That way, you can get an unbiased opinion when you step out in your new dress.

Once inside the trial room, and you’ve worn the new shirt and pant, you suddenly lose the plot. The reflection in the mirror is totally unflattering. You try everything- pose with your hands in the pockets; or leave the shirt out to look cool and casual; or tuck the shirt in…to look formal and business-like, nothing appears right at all. You pose sideways, looking at the mirror through the corner of your eyes, or face the mirror with your back to it, and glance back “Exorcist style”; whatever you do, you still look like a clown. May be, it is the fitting- the trousers are too baggy. Other unrelated thoughts hold you hostage- when did the forehead grow to such huge proportions? You tousle the hair a bit, to conceal the forehead. And yes, you need a second opinion on these trousers for sure.

Wearing the new trousers, you tiptoe out of the trial-room. Wife is nowhere, kids are nowhere. Where did they go? They were supposed to wait here, wait just here! You feel exactly like Vali did. He asked Sugreeva to wait outside the cave. When Vali emerged from the cave, Sugreeva was nowhere, he had vanished into thin air. No wonder, Vali flew into such a rage. It was a breach of trust. Like Vali, you look this way and that, drifting well away from the orbit of the trial-room. There is irritation, there is anger, there is confusion- where did they all go?

Suddenly, you find the salesman tugging at your new trousers from the back, trying to yank it off. “This is too much! You think I am running away with these new trousers? I am looking for my wife and children! Do you get it? Do you get it?”  you snap back. While he tries to calm you down, you are now in a different mood altogether, “I don’t want any of these clothes at all!” and head back to the trial-room in a huff.

To your horror, you cannot recall which trial-room you used. They all look the same. Was it the first trial-room, or perhaps the one in the middle? What is worse, now all the trial-rooms are locked and busy. In the interim period, when you loitered around, someone appears to have encroached and taken over the same trial-room.

Anger gets converted into a panic attack. Where is your pant that you left behind in the trial-room? What if someone walked away with your pant or the wallet? Your entire life hinges on that wallet- your debit cards, your credit cards, your driver’s license, your PAN card, just about everything. Lose your wallet and life will be completely derailed for months on end.

The mind is in a tizzy. Common-sense goes for a toss. You want your pant back. That’s all that matters. The search requires unconventional methods. You lie down on the floor, peering through the gap under the trial-room door. This trial-room does not have your pant. What about the next one? You crawl, on all fours, to the next trial-room, with your head lateral to the floor. At that opportune moment, a lady walks out from the trial-room. The last thing she expects is a Peeping Tom on the floor. “What are you doing?” she stutters, totally shocked. You are equally alarmed and blabber incoherently, “My pant! My pant! I am looking for my pant! Not the one I am wearing- the one I left in the trial-room!”

Luckily, you spot your pant. “My pant!”- you exclaim and rush in. You are about to slam the trial-room door shut, when the lady stops you, holding the door, in a quick countermove, “You cannot use! My clothes are inside!”

It’s as if the confusion will never end. By now, the security man has reached the trial-room and douses the fire before it snowballs out of control. Absent-mindedly, you had strolled into the womens' trial room, a blunder in the first place!

Trial-rooms surely have a lot of room…to turn into a veritable “trial by fire”! Phew!

PS: Not that this incident happened, but when you let your imagination loose, these are possibilities nonetheless, and we have come dangerously close to some of them!