Letting things on

You know you've slept too much when the sheets start becoming itchy and the air presses down on you. It was 2:18 am by my neon-happy digital clock, and I decided it was time I got brave. I threw my fleecy bed-covers away and hauled myself out of bed. The chill brushed at my skin but it was welcome after the suffocating warmth of the room.

Shaking off my state of vegetative placidity, I headed towards the bathroom. Nothing shocks better than cold, cold tap-water first thing in the morning. Sufficiently aroused, I wondered around the house. It's funny, but habituation comes to nought when you move around your own house in the darkness. The house's familiar architecture seems formidable and challenging to the purpose of smooth motion. So much for night-vision goggles .. you crash into everything that comes within a three-inch radius of your feet and arms and you are, literally, in the dark. And sounds, oh god. Every rustle, every whoosh and every creak is magnified so deeply, you think you're in one of those ads where the fellow begins by tapping his cellphone on the table and before you know it, the whole restaurant is in the midst of a full-blown A Capella instrumental concert.

After bumping around a la carte Don Quixote, I finally reached the balcony. Although it looks like a stunner even during the day, it had never looked more beautiful than it had that night. Bathed in silvery moonlight, it looked like a ship sailing confidently across a dark ocean. Dad's shirts strung artlessly on the clothesline looked like sails and the railing made good to the imagery of a deck. I could almost lean over the railings and shout, "To the Seaboard!". There was a tall wooden stool to the far right and I couldn't resist sitting on top of it. A once-upon-a-time handkerchief served as an eye-patch and a discarded tissue-paper roll served as my telescope. Our balcony overlooks the lake and so my vision of an ocean was complete. I realized that everything was with me. Figmental or factual, all the elements came together and lent themselves to my maritime imagination wholeheartedly. Move over, Keira Knightley.

I didn't plunder or order about or take control of rough seas. I just sat there and thought, how often do Time and a Situation come together and actually help you create something like this? I would've created something similar with or without these little associative aids but I wouldn't have felt so much in peace with the world. There wasn't much I was looking for when I had entered the balcony.

And there shouldn't be so much force, so much conscious intent attached when you decide to create something. There's something very wise about the myth that you never find pots of gold under rainbow if you deliberately search for them.

Everydays

It was when I was in 9th that I began to notice the whats-up phenomenon. It was a phenomenon in its own right; everybody seemed to be swept by the two words. Whenever I met a friend say after a week, those two words would issue forth.

I think it was the same time when conversation started to become compact. Situations were abbreviated, gesticulations were more and more flowery and in cyberspace, emoticons created a short-cut for my tongue. I knew the right word was waiting to be thrown out, but the urgency to articulate was too great. This is something I constantly experience not only in a real but also in a virtual conversation.

I love walking on a road unknown and unsought for. Sometimes I wonder if friends have become a necessity to flatter the need to be heard, understood and most importantly known. There is great peace in being alone. Not because you're a rebel without a reason, but because if you give yourself time, there's so much to listen to, so much to wonder about. We do have moments of what I call cosmic connections; something like an intuitive strand which weaves itself between two people. These moments are beautiful and are always cherished lovingly. But it's the rarity, the yawning eternity between these moments which makes them so beautiful. I wonder why we have to ceaselessly search for something like that, some semblance of purpose, need, existential worth.

I still feel a little disconnected when somebody asks me what's up. As if there is this tremendous need for things to be bright, perky and strawberry-pink. I like the worn-out-socks comfort of a day when I get a bus on time, when the train compartment is not reeking with Darwinism and when the sun isn't sweaty and thirsty. Or days when I don't get a bus on time, when the trains are reeking with Darwinism but I'm under my umbrella and still smiling at a puzzled sun. How do you describe a day when you just sat on the train, straight from Dadar to Kanjurmarg, just peacefully thinking about nothing at all. I remember something I read from a Calvin and Hobbes Jumbo Book:

"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want." - Calvin
Amen to everydays.