Lift under maintenance

Five minutes had passed. I was still laughing with another friend of mine. We found it strangely funny to be stuck in the lift. Eerily the very previous day I had read something about getting stuck in an elevator and people’s panic-attacks at such situations. I had not even imagined that it would happen so soon. It was like “deja senti”. I knew the feeling of being stuck in the elevator even before I actually did.

Here’s what happened. We were fourteen girls on a crazy spree of enjoying, screaming, making fun of people because we hardly have anything better to do during exams especially when you are in a hostel with people with weird-wired brains (Wow! Did I just coin a word?). After an hour full of fun we decided we would get into the elevator whose capacity is just eight people.  We decided to get in even though we knew all the odds.

It was a funny scene. We were laughing like mad people. I’m not exaggerating! We got into to the lift one by one- With a ‘headcount’ of fourteen. We called out for 2 more people but they refused to get it; which was good for them! We got into the lift and ceremoniously pressed the button.  We started screaming again with some mad-joy. It took us a minute to realize that we were stuck in between first floor.

My first and continuous reaction was ‘Laughter’! We all screamed again with an air of euphoria because what we knew would happen, had happened. And we-being-girls started taking pictures; Memories- you know what I mean! A minute or two passed. Two of the girls got panicky. They started cursing for very minimal ventilation (oh please! What do you want, a window to an elevator!?)

We realized we had to make ourselves heard so we screamed out loud, banged on the doors of the elevator. Suddenly the lights went out! The two girls who were panic-stricken had gone too jumpy by now. They started crying… they said they couldn’t breathe. And there I was laughing my lungs out. I was only adding to their anxiety. They all started scolding me. But there I was laughing even more as if out of some weird sadistic joy. But I was a victim too! Anyway, we continued to try our best to come out of it.

We heard a voice say ‘wait for a few minutes, the help is on the way’ and we felt better but the duo couldn’t stop themselves. One of them even tried to pull apart the ceiling of the elevator in search for ventilation. This made us laugh even more. There was a conundrum of emotions. A few of them were rendered catatonic by fear, few of them too panicky to be sane and there was me gone too crazy with laughter. We waited there. I knew it’d be over in no time.

We were out! No doubt, we had to listen to the reprimands by our warden which sounded music to my ears because after-all we did all this for some reason and I felt I had achieved it.

That night I slept with a smile on my face. The “Lift under maintenance” sign had made me over-joyed. I couldn’t have asked for more. One year of hostel-life and I finally felt I had “Done something”!

 

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• Tagged: Elevator-stuck, Friends, Fun, Funny incident