“You must take this, I insist,” said our kind hosts and handed a bag to Mamatha, my wife, as we were leaving their home in New Jersey after a beautiful evening.
We returned to my son’s new abode, which was only a few miles away. I opened the bag, having seen the kind hostess place Samosas in the bag. Along with the Samosas were kept an apple and a ripe pear. I hogged two Samosas like a starved refugee.
I then decided to eat something healthy and reached out to the Pear. I like my fruits sans skin despite the nutrition the skin harbors. So, I reached out to THE skin peeler I had bought just the previous day for my son (As a self-considered culinary and cutlery expert, I was unhappy with the one he had in his new kitchen).
The new skin peeler package was made so tamper-free that even Superman would have difficulty opening it. The peeler was crucified on rigid cardboard and tied at the back with two impregnable plastic cords that were strong enough to lift the Statue of Liberty. My Einsteinium brain immediately deduced that the best way to cut the cords was to nudge a Kitchen knife into the knot and ply it open. I took out the big knife in the drawer. I held the peeler pack with my left hand and inserted the knife into the knot with my right hand.
It is important to note that Kitchen knives in America are so sharp that one can shave with them. I cut the knot swiftly and deftly, but what followed could easily fit into a Quentin Tarantino movie. The top edge of the knife pierced my left wrist and made a deep cut at the exact spot where Doctors read the pulse. Blood jetted out of my artery, spewing across the room, and splashed the opposite wall. I yelled to my wife and son, wrapping and pressing my left wrist with a Kitchen towel. My wife came running and, looking at the blood bursting out of my wrist like the Niagara Falls that we had visited the previous week, screamed loud enough to wake the neighborhood. The panic and fear on her face, accompanied by tears, made it seem like I was already knocking on heaven’s door. My much younger but wiser son joined the chorus and yelled at me in anger and terror combined.
“Oh my God, you have cut your artery in the wrist. I told you a hundred times to be careful with that knife Appa. It is for cutting meat” my son yelled terrified. He had warned me several times not to touch it (I had once used it as an Omelette flipper).
He immediately found the address of the nearest Hospital with an ER and ordered an Uber. The driver, Jeff, looked at my blood-soaked wrist from the rear-view mirror concluded that I had decided to end my life.
“You must have called 911. Why did you call me?” Uber Driver Jeff grumbled aloud.
“It was a Kitchen accident, Jeff,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. He shook his head and kept ranting the same thing repeatedly. But he was nice enough not to stop and drop us off at the Hospital.
Once I reached the Hospital, I was rushed to the ER, made to sit, and adorned with probes and bands. They checked my vitals, wrapped the cut with a dressing, and made me lie on a table. I spent the next two hours in the ER for an M.D. to look and put glue on the cut before packing me off.
Precisely 48 hours later, I am at gate 3 in JFK, returning to India as I write this post.
I tried telling both my wife and my son that it was not my fault but the wretched Pear that seduced me.
So, the next time you reach out for a Kitchen knife, be cautious, for you never know when a fruit or vegetable will entice and avenge humanity’s cruelty on you.
