With cellotape, you are always on a sticky wicket! The pun is intended! The occasions are many- you need to wrap a wedding-gift or need to cover the notebook for your ward.
You get the cellotape out of the drawer. Yes, cellotape does
come with its “dispenser”, but somehow, that avatar has gone missing from the
drawer. All that comes to hand is the basic ring-version, with no dispenser.
They talk about the Lord having “no beginning and no end”-
“na adi…na anta”. The cello-tape-ring mirrors the Lord- he just does not have
any beginning! You run your finger over the ring. You cannot catch the start of
the trail. You dig your nail to spot that elusive perforation. There’s none! It
seems like a monolith apparatus, smooth as a river-stone. Irritation wells up,
“Why cannot someone keep the cellotape *along* with its dispenser, I say?”
Just when you are on the verge of flinging the cellotape,
lock, stock and barrel… out of the window, the finger stumbles upon the first
ray of hope- the beginning of the ribbon! Excitedly, you peel off the ribbon.
Hurry makes a hash of most things, more so, when you are unraveling cellotape.
You expect the ribbon to flow out nice and full, but it doesn’t. It tears off
at an angle, a total no-no. You know what happens next. You have no choice but
to peel off more…with the hope that somehow, it will straighten itself out.
It doesn’t! On the contrary, it’s like peeling an onion. By
now, you have pulled out miles and miles of cellotape- all twisted and
crumpled, and completely unusable! In the process, your fist is sticky and
gooey, and like the proverbial silkworm, you are about to get cello-tape
cocooned!
At this point, you give up. You need help. You need to
delegate the job. You need an attendant.
There is an unwritten law-the moment you delegate a job, you
forget its complexity. The delegator assumes absolute command- “his lordship”
orders his attendant about. Let it be amply clear- there is no job as
unforgiving as being a “cellotape attendant”. Whatever he may do, he will be
faulted, pilloried, and crucified.
“Why did you lose the beginning of the ribbon again? I gave
it to you just now…didn’t I? This is too much!” his lordship fumes! If the
attendant hands over a big piece of cellotape, his lordship wants a smaller
one. If it’s a small piece, he complains it is too small and unusable. “Don’t
give me the cellotape by holding the sticky side with your finger. By the time
you transfer it to me, it loses all its glue! How will it ever stick?”
Cutting a cellotape precisely is no mean task. If you
use a pair of scissors, there are too many things to handle. Two hands just
cannot accomplish the job. The scissor is held in the right hand, the cellotape
is clasped in the left. What happens to the piece that you have just
cut out? Something must give way, and it does. The cut-out piece sticks to your
finger, which is good. But in the melee, the cellotape ring rolls off to the
ground. The beginning of the trail is erased…and you must start all over again!
It is like Bhageeratha, you need infinite patience to get this Ganga to the
earth!
You take a firm decision- “No more scissors and the
associated tangle. I will use my bare hands, much like Bheema…to snap off
the piece!” For a few tries, this method
works fine. The exultation is premature. The next piece just does not snap. On
the contrary, it leads you astray, and now, you have inadvertently pulled out
many more miles of tape…and still cannot get it to snap!
The cellotape has now reached lands-end! Yes, it’s
over…all over! Only the skeletal shell
remains, round and smooth, as you run your finger over it.
“Where did all the cellotape go? Did you eat it? We still
have half the gift to be wrapped! What will we do now?” his lordship is
evidently…very livid and very angry!
