Ascending a descending escalator

So the e-mail that I sent to my office colleagues on a November morning read like this: 

Dear all,
I fell down the stairs and hurt my knee badly. The doctor has recommended 2-3 days of bed rest. Would be working from home till then.
Regards
Achintya

Although I actually had fallen from stairs, I actually had hurt my knee and was on bed rest, I knew that this information was slightly different from what really had happened...
The previous evening I was rushing my way in a mall to a store which I knew was going to close soon. I had one more floor to climb when I saw that the only thing separating me and the store was an escalator. The only problem was that it was moving down and I had to climb up. Generally each descending escalator is coupled with an ascending one. In this case it was a few meters away. Then suddenly I found a voice in me asking me to climb up the descending thing. That voice convinced me that I had already done it once and I can do it again. So I started doing the impossible, I started climbing up that thing. And as some witnesses state I fell twice, hurt the same knee twice by the escalator edge , made a fool of myself in the mall.... but ultimately I did it, I climbed the escalator.

And then later when I told this story to other people, almost everyone convinced me that it was a pretty difficult thing to do. And I found that they were right because of two reasons:
1) The very fact that you are climbing up a descending thing, so you have to be faster than the speed with which it is going down.
2) In an escalator the height of each step is not equal and is different at different periods in the whole cycle. So if you see, step size is smaller in the beginning, then it gets bigger and then get small again when you reach the end. That increases chances of toppling. 

So even though I ended up with an injured knee, some long lectures from friends and limped for the next 10 days, I was happy that I did that thing and that I completed whatever crazy feat I was trying to do. So much so, that I decided to do it again the next time but without falling. So the top '5 things in my wishlist before I turn 28' looked something like this:
1) Rock climb at Grand Canyon
2) Spend a month long holiday in Mediterranean
3) Make enough money to spend a month long holiday in Mediterranean
4) Get a job where I can get a month long holiday to spend it in Mediterranean
5) Climb up descending escalator without falling

So things started going fine again; my knee recovered; I stopped doing crazy stunts because I knew I had 4 more years to do them; and everything went fine until yesterday when I had the most terrible experience one could have in my situation...
So I was at Ansal  Plaza and as usual everything was going fine until I saw this guy trying to do the same thing that I did that day. He was climbing a descending escalator! And as I saw him struggle with the first few steps, I thought, Oh God, please don't make him fall. And as I saw him reach the last steps, I thought, Oh God, please make him fall. But he ultimately did it.. he climbed up a descending escalator!
And more thing I might have missed upon... that guy must have probably been some 65 years in age.

So ultimately it sucks to suck at something and then get to see the last man you expected on the planet to do it. But then you never know, someone might be fulfilling his '5 things to do before I turn 65' wishes! (Did the escalator at Ansal's moved slower than the one in the mall where I fell down ??)

Prologue

Some time a year back I thought of writing my second play. Second play because a year before the year I thought of writing my second play, I had helped this guy write a play for our hostel entry to the inter hostel play competition. However it didn't turn out that well, and the reason that came out from a mutual discussion later, was because I wanted a funny play and he wanted something philosophical and we ended up mixing the two :)

So I thought the best way to learn something is to do it yourself and hence I decided to write this play some time back. Then things kept on pending and I was successfully able to convince my self that I did not have time for these random experiments. However then work life started and I realized that I at least have the late evenings to myself which can be devoted to such arbitrary things.

Also I have thought to this play a kind of a social media experiment. I have decided to write this play in blog entries. I will also like to take help from my readers ( whatever small numbers manage to fall upon this blog) to decide the course of the story. This can be done through polls and comments. So everyday almost everyday most of the days I will try to update this story. Probably each post can be like a scene.

Now we begin with the most difficult part, the central theme and the core story. Without thinking much, let me keep this as a story of a balcony belonging to a house shared by two guys. These guys do separate jobs but then often find themselves chatting in this very balcony after the days long work. And hence the title of the play: The Balcony


The reason for writing a play about a house balcony is that I always feel balcony is a best place to observe the world (after facebook). You see so many unknown people and so many unknown faces with each  face having a different story. And ofcourse as you can just see them and not hear them, you interpret these stories in your own way. There are other benefits too but then I won't like people to get judgemental.So I hope people enjoy the upcoming posts on the play: The Balcony

Next post: The Characters