It is not really a long drive from my place to the Marriott, but when I went up the elevator to the 2nd Floor to the Muse Art Gallery where my friends Prashant Jain and Revathi Turaga were celebrating 9 months of their hugely successful Gifting Venture…I suddenly found that I was experiencing a desperate urge to pee.

So I left my wife alone at the entrance to the gallery and walked briskly to the loos, scared that I would not be able to hold on too much longer. The toilets on this side of the gallery are almost a mile away and the walk was lonely and brisk. I was panting by the end of it all, but quite satisfied that I had managed to avoid the embarrassment of wetting my pants. I reached the end of the corridor where the loos are and ran into the loo…

…only to be confronted with an unfamiliar sight. There were only six or seven cubicles with pots in them, but the usual urinals on the wall were missing. I had no time to think and I walked into a cubicle…did not even have the time to shut the door…and let go…

Minutes later, as bliss was replaced by a rational and calm look at the world, I realised that I had walked into the Ladies Section. My luck was good since no one entered the loo while I was there…no one saw me going out. And I walked shamefacedly back to the gallery.

And that is when my problems began.

You see the invite to the event had specified that we should all sport a dash of yellow. I did think of wearing a yellow shirt or throw on a yellow scarf but for once I decided to be more bizarre than usual.

A few years ago when I had lost some weight due to my illness and due to the fact that I had no trousers that could be worn at that size I had bought myself a pair of track suit lowers. One of them a bright incandescent canary yellow.

Many of my friends and family had made fun of me then but my recovery was more on my mind than any colour sensibilities. However, as I grew back into shape the kids,,,or the wife…or both…contrived to hide away the offensive yellow track into the back of my cupboard.

For the occasion however I rummaged through my cupboard, found the object in question and wore it with a naughty smile on my face. To top it all I had an old pair of Nikes that had a streak of yellow, so that completed my ensemble. To soften the impact of it all, my wife convinced me to wear a sober maroon shirt.

It was only when I was walking back briskly from the loo after my misadventure that I realised that I was in a new kind of trouble.

Due to a long period of being tucked away in the cupboard and perhaps due to non-use, the elastic on the tracks had lost its elasticity. And the tracks were slowly but surely slipping off my waist.

Now this was dangerous territory, and not just because I had forgotten to wear yellow underwear, but also because my mind was already dreading some CCTV footage that the hotel may possess about my foray into forbidden territory and I did not want to have a wardrobe malfunction any time soon.

So I explained things to my wife, gently and discretely held on to my pants, walked in and managed to say hello to a few friends. The  agenda after the candle lighting was the wine and cheese. But then I realised that if I held a glass of wine in one hand and nibbled on a cheesebyte with the other, the danger of dropping my pants would be more real than necessary.

So with the least amount of fuss, and without the courtesy of good byes I made a quick exit and managed a cheeky dash to the safety of my car…

Then we went home and changed into more formal clothes since we had to go to another party, but that’s a whole different story.