Investment Gone Sour

I got up very early this morning and was done with my ablutions, exercise and walk much before my wife was up. I know by experience that a cup of coffee prepared fresh and invested in front of her by the time she is ready to face the world returns good dividends through the day. I took out the container of milk from the fridge, removed the cream, measured out a cup and was about to pour it into the small vessel we usually use for preparing coffee. I was holding the cup full of milk in my left hand, had just placed the container of milk back on the cooking platform, and was poised for pouring milk from the cup into the vessel when a mosquito casually flew in and settled on my left elbow. Whether it was just intending to rest there for a while or it was on the lookout for an early breakfast I do not know.

My right hand received a reflex instruction ‘HIT’ and started to act. The next split second my brain realized the disastrous result of hitting a mosquito sitting on the left hand which was holding a cupful of milk (just to clear a doubt, the hand was holding the cup, not the mosquito and even if the mosquito were holding the cup the result would have been the same anyway) and it reversed the order to ‘NO’. By then the right hand was already halfway through. It tried to obey the new order but could not reverse the momentum already gained. It managed only to reduce the force of the hit.

The mosquito thought that I was just nudging it to move out as I was unable to bear its weight for long and flew out dipping its wings in what I think was a ‘thanks’ for the landing right and courtesy offered. The hit, though not enough to squash a mosquito, was enough to upset a hand holding a cup of milk and as i turned I found myself looking into the angry eyes of a wife who had to begin her day clearing a cupful of milk spreading slowly on the cooking platform.

An investment gone sour.