My friends Neena and Anil are in town for a few days. Yesterday while Anil was away on some errands, I had taken Neena for high tea at a local restaurant. On our way out, my daughter in law Leena was coming in and I was delighted. It is always a pleasure to meet up with her and yesterday was no exception. Since Neena had never met her I asked Neena if she could guess who this daughter of mine is. Neena, who has heard of my son Ranjan’s current girl friend Manjiree promptly suggested that name much to Leena’s embarrassment. Neena was most apologetic and when on Anil returned and we shared this with him, he remarked that his family is famous for dropping bricks.
Neena, knowing my weakness for home baked cakes, had baked one and brought it with her all the way from Delhi and I informed Ranjan to have it for dinner when he came home. He did not know that Neena had brought it and asked me this morning as to who had brought it, misheard me and promptly rang up Leena, his ex to thank her for the cake and she was zapped! The zapping was more poignant for having met Neena just yesterday and having experienced the faux pas.
I promptly told Neena that our family is also rapidly catching up with hers for dropping bricks.
I think that the problem is that we have too many similar sounding names among the people we know. Leena, Meena, Neena etc, Mitali, Meeta, Neetu etc are just some that can cause such brick dropping moments!