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Interested in blogging for timesofindia.com? We will be happy to have you on board as a blogger, if you have the knack for writing. Just drop in a mail at toiblogs@timesinternet.in with a brief bio and we will get in touch with you.

Bikram Vohra is a humor writer.

I have just been gifted a razor with five blades. There was a time you unscrewed the little stainless steel safety razor, put in a blade and that was that. Now my new brigade of blades gleam under their transparent plastic dome and I wonder what the first blade doesn’t do that two, three and four accomplish with the fifth bringing up the rear and, like a sheepdog, shepherding the errant stray bristle.

There is also a battery that makes it vibrate and how that jumpiness helps is still a mystery. But before it can be solved, and the super razor put on parade I have to get to it. The human-resistant plastic cover and the cardboard back refuse to budge even as you engage in herculean efforts and go apoplectic. The plastic bends but does not crack and there you are wrestling away. Like you thought opening a child’s toy from its packaging was tough not to mention releasing a new toothbrush from the captivity of its casing, these are mere bagatelle compared to the five-blader that mocks all your efforts.

Then you notice three dots and a silhouette of a scissor on the box which is a salvation except that all these packagers believe scissors are easily accessed in every home. Contrary to this delusion, scissors, like car keys and pens, vanish like Houdini when you need them. So, you yell, where are the flipping scissors, anyone. If your house is like mine only the echo will answer so you launch a hunt with the vigour of Jason going for the golden fleece and eureka, you weep with relief as a pair of scissors are found. Thanks to disuse they are not sharp enough to cut through the thick backing and only squish and crunch it. Now that it is an all-out war you try to crack the plastic with various types of cutleries, stabbing multiple holes in it like it was a murderous spree. The package looks much like Bonnie and Clyde’s car after the FBI had opened fire but it is still hanging in there.

You wish you had a sword or a sabre or a rapier and you could stick it into the person who thought this is how evil the wrapping should be. Finally defeated, you leave it soaking in the basin till the cardboard gets soggy and crumbles and finally comes unstuck.

Now that I have five blades like those pretty maids in a row, what happens if one of them says sorry, not working, today is my day off.

And then there were four. Talk about close shaves.

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Views expressed above are the author's own.

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