Reverse Deja-Vu

Something interesting happened last weekend. We went to Lazy Daze festival of our city, hung out for a while and then headed to the mall to cool off and grab a bite. As I hauled my 3 years old on my back , I promised myself to remember to take out the cell phone out of my jeans pocket to put back in my purse after buckling him in the car seat. By the time 'click-it' happened, the thought flicked out of my head. The uncomfortable bulge of the cell phone also somehow did not do the trick to pressure my brain to put it back in purse. We drove to the mall , walked in Sears and Neev had to use the bathroom. I took him with me to the ladies room in the store and as I was helping him to use the potty, he went, 'mommy your cellphone' and pushed it out of my jeans pocket. I found myself picking it up and putting it up on the toilet roll cover and imagining in flash of a second that I am going to forget to put it back in my pocket/purse , lose it and then be miserable because it has so much stored on it. I tapped myself back from the imaginary world to reality and thought, its only for 10 seconds, how can you not remember to put it back when you are thinking about it already.
Next thing , we washed hands, zipped out from the restroom and went to the food court for Italian. Neev guzzled mango-peach iced tea by gallons , did not touch any food and by the time we were done with lunch, he was ready to go pee-pee again. As I rushed him to the restroom , Wham, I realized that I did not pick up my cell phone from the rest room earlier. I could not believe myself. Anurag tried my cellphone and obviously it was turned off by whoever had got it. We went to Sears, checked the restroom, asked the janitor who happened to be cleaning and he said that he did the last cleaning 20 minutes ago and found no cell phone. We tried the customer service desk , nobody had turned in anything. We still gave our contact no. in case someone returned it later. So here I was sitting in a chair in the middle of the mall, watching the carousel go round and having a spin in my own head , thinking that I had visualized all this was going to happen and its actually happening. It was a nice Nokia E series cellphone, not a black berry or i phone but I loved it. More importantly it had some cute pictures of my boys , of moments that I wanted to capture when I was not lugging my over sized camera , some sweet messages that I liked to read whenever I needed a pick me up. And it had phone nos of people, important and also those who are not. It was my true companion when my husband could not travel with me to India on our last trip. It served its purpose when our Cathay Pacific flight descended at Tai Pei instead of Singapore because of a technical problem and I was stranded with 2 kids , trying to make head or tails of Mandarin signs at their airport, fearing I was going to lose my connecting flight from Singapore to Delhi because for sure I could not make it to Singapore on time. Thank God for my ever so smart husband who was tracking our flight online and was aware of this little mishap and his call at the right moment was a God send on that cell phone. I was literally in tears as Neev started feeling feverish. To be able to just hear Anurag's assuring voice on that cell phone was good enough to pull myself together.
It was this cellphone that I used to frantically call our family doctor in India at 1 in the morning because Avi had the worst stomach ache.
It was this cellphone that I used in India as a night light to trace my steps to light a candle when the power outage was so severe it made our back-up inverters cry.
It was this cellphone that I used to plan my little sister's wedding, to talk to my best friend, to my family and last but not the least to make Neev calm down in a difficult moment with his favorite 'hippo and leo' video that my brother's wife downloaded for him.
All in all it was simply not just a cell phone !
While I was lamenting the absence of my phone, Anurag went over to a couple of security officers and apprised them of our loss. We knew nothing could be done and were told so by those officers. I was upset and in no mood to use the Groupon coupon for Gap. We started back for home and I could not get over the fact that I practically saw all this happening in my head , and still could not stop it from happening. Mid-way Anurag's cell phone buzzed. It was Sears, telling me that my cellphone has been found , apparently in some other rest room which I never used. Never minding the twisted story, I was just happy to have it back.
This for me was a very interesting experience, to have this feeling of knowing what was going to happen, to live it the next moment with an unexpected happy ending.
In the end I am going to say, 'all's well that ends well' !