Some folks are wired to deal with humiliating moments

My father was recently telling me about how life sometimes puts us in embarrassing situations that we have no control over. He had a difference of opinion with a colleague while editing a scientific magazine and it led to some bitter exchanges. But it was only over the subject matter, nothing personal. Some days later when he reached the venue of a function, the person in question was there to receive him warmly. However, more recently, during an online Zoom meeting of this group, there was a power cut at our home just when this geoscientist began speaking. The result was that on the online platform, it showed that my dad had signed out. That could have been construed any which way, but true to his nature, my father never gave anyone any explanation.

Within weeks of my father recounting this incident, I had a similar experience, only it could have been worse.

I had joined a hiking trip to Fragrant Hills in Beijing during the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday. The sun had set by the time we scaled the 575-meter-high Xianglu peak. We clicked pictures of a moon rising over Beijing and ate mooncakes before beginning our descent. It was getting darker. I nearly tripped once and we were frequently running into cobwebs, so one of us turned on his phone's torch to light the path ahead. It was beautiful and kind of eerie.

Some way into our return journey, my phone began ringing. It was a colleague with whom I had often run into similar arguments with as my dad had with his acquaintance. Again, nothing personal. He asked me if I had checked the text message he had sent. I hadn't as I was trying to be more sure-footed. Turns out he had requested me to order some food for him over a delivery app, as he wasn't that tech-savvy. Replying to him that I will place the order right away, I switched to the food-delivery app. At that exact moment, my phone conked out.

My battery had been very low when we were on Xianglu peak. Thanks — or perhaps not, in this case — to a growing reliance on technology, I didn't remember my colleague's phone number, as I did every number in my childhood. And I hadn't even made a note of what he wanted to order. We must have been at an altitude of at least 400 meters, still about an hour's worth of walking left. None of us had a power bank.

I told my friends how utterly embarrassing this was going to be for me. We all stopped for a while to take all of this in, the person holding the torch switching it on and off to indicate our state of mind. But he was a quick thinker and explained that I already had the solution in my grasp. Literally.

He pointed at his bag, which I was holding, as he had carried our things on the way up. From it, he took out his laptop. After switching it on, he plugged in a power cable which had three points at the other end, one of them matching the phone that needed charging. At first nothing happened, but moments later, though it seemed like ages, the phone began buffering to life. As one friend held the laptop, and another one the torch, I ensured the phone was charging while a third friend took snapshots of the suggested order and my colleague's phone number. Working as a team we had achieved what seemed impossible not less than 10 minutes ago. By then my colleague had begun texting: "Have you ordered? How much do I pay?" And unlike my father, I did more than just give an explanation for the delay.