Twenty Four Hours

Credits: twitter.com

One full day; a single rotation of this mighty earth on its axis; twenty four hours; it means different things to different people. It begins and ends in different ways- for each of us. Not for the cosmos. Everything is just the same, just as it should be. The Earth doesn’t get irritable and spin faster on some days or spin slowly on others due to boredom or laziness. No! Such mood swings are just us, no one else- not plants nor animals unless humans have entered their lives, that is.

On second thoughts, the cosmos does have emotions; when you push it too far natural calamities that threaten our existence occur and when all is well we have rainbows and happy clouds, sunshine and all things bright and beautiful!!

The house is quiet today and it feels weird but tense. Weird because it was a long weekend with everyone at home and now they are all off to their respective places of work. Though my kids are past the stages where they make noise or seek attention (on the contrary, they would love us to forget that they exist except when they have to be fed) and my husband is no pest either, rather amicable in fact (on most occasions), there is a general break of routine and a feeling of fullness in the home. With them gone and the domestic helps having left (they were on time today, touchwood!!), it is a strange sort of silence. Possibly magnified due to the continuous drizzle outside with a blanket of clouds hiding the sun, everything seems numb. Tense because the silence feels pregnant- as though a bubble would burst and things would get noisy again. 

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No offence to my loved ones but I revere this silence. It is sacred for me. Even as a kid, I used to love to sit in complete silence. All those things that went unnoticed when activity was on came alive in the dead silence the afternoons brought. My father was, almost always, never home in the afternoons and my brother melted into the background (when he was home that is, for he did spend a number of years in the hostel) so that he wouldn’t get disturbed. My mother who was a headache champion, would have liberally applied tiger balm on her forehead, tied it with a “thorthu’ (a traditional thin cotton towel used in Kerala, which dries easily in humid weather) and settle down to sleep with a warning not to make noise. Being a light sleeper she would wake up at the slightest noise and I almost always got into trouble when I went to steal some goodies from the larder. She was scary then and while I would freeze, biscuits or drinking chocolate tin in hand, I’d also feel bad for her for I knew she suffered miserable pain. In my defense, this usually occurred close to wake up time which would be nearly two hours after lunch! The biscuits would send me telepathic signals which only I could hear- they wanted to be devoured and I had to oblige!! 

Well, the nearly two hours that I got before the fiasco of most days, was a beautiful time. I was usually role playing at the beginning so I’d have a dupatta wrapped around me, like a saree and a pillow/doll in hand which played the role of my infant, though as I got carried away with my thoughts, I’d forgetfully sit on the pillow! The blanket of silence would envelop me and usually, I’d sit near a window or door. Any tiny movement was audible, but there was a perfect kind of still. I was a little unnerved by it but I also loved it (I guess contradictions were part of me, even then!). Traffic used to be less those days and minimal during that time of the day and yet that occasional vehicle, it would seem, was conscious of the silence and quietly whizzed past, almost apologetically, for messing with the tranquil all around. I did not know meditation back then but I guess it could be equated to that- being a part of everything naturally, being one with the world- just being!

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Presently, I have settled down in front of my desktop only after having done the first lot of mundane jobs which include sending the family off to their places of work, doing the crossword and Sudoku (giving the latter a miss these days), tidying the beds, putting clothes for wash, boiling milk, checking whether dusting was needed and quickly looking away from places that need attention, getting the maids to finish their work and scoot and having bathed and lit the lamp to offer gratitude to my Lord Shiva. I take time to gather myself reassuringly that this calm was here to stay for at least another four hours! Is all my work done? NO. All the cooking is just waiting to happen. I have a parcel to post and it has to be done today. I opened my diary and see the TTBD list (things to be done) and I quickly shut it with an unreasonable streak of stubbornness. I won’t do anything today except absolute essentials, I decide.

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Monday is a sad day for the working community but for home makers across the world, this is their day. The first day of the week where they can connect with themselves and to the silence; almost therapeutic, I dare say. It won’t last forever, this lovely uninterrupted silence, but it can definitely accommodate a daydream or two!

I am in a philosophical mood today. Why is everything the way it is? Why do we, the most advanced beings on the planet, need to be taught self discipline (and never learn it), while plants and animals follow the ways of nature effortlessly. Early man followed it too. Where and when did we digress and lose our balance? Why are all sinful things so lucrative? And I don’t want a religious response about the devil and his ways! Just as we have a biological clock which functions to perfection if we allow it to so also we have a basic setting that can easily tune into nature if we let it.

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I am trying to get to basic setting. While the biological clock works perfectly on most days of late, getting back to basic setting is more difficult than I thought it would be. I am holding on to meditation for dear life. I know the answers but the temptations are too strong. I have not given up and I don’t plan to but I do not know how long I will take to be what I was meant to be- simple and uncomplicated- one with the source; complete in myself; not finding out who I am and struggling to find my path or my calling but just knowing it- like a plant or an animal and being content with it all.

I look at the clock and realize that I have less than two hours to cook a decent meal for my family. It is one in the afternoon and I have just made it to the thirteenth hour of my twenty four! Somehow, on weekdays, the rest of the day is predictable. The kids get home, lunch for them, then their dad, then games and studies and dinner and TV and… (And how we forget that we aren’t supposed to use so many ‘ands’ in a sentence!)

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I am not living such a dull life, am I? I do make time for long chats with Ma and Dad and a few dear friends, writing, reading books and Candy Crush Jelly Saga- the only game on my phone since I have deleted Scrabble, Sudoku, Fruit Splash and Logo Quiz and yes! An hour of loud music and dancing (play acting too- old habits die hard)!!

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For those of you who envy my twenty four hours, do put down yours on paper and you’ll find you live a great life too and for those who think I’m whiling away my life, you don’t know what you are missing!!! In short, our lives are meant to be the way it is, with us striving to make ourselves and those around us happy, some good days, some bad, some fast, some dull… but if we curb our expectations and the constant urge to prove ourselves and instead just try being one with the Universe, we’d be a lot happier or at least a lot less stressed. Think about it, each day of ours is different…in that we are unique! It seems mundane only if we let our minds get bored and are not alive to every moment. The wise tell us to live mindfully, conscious of every moment. That is the key to liberation. Mumbling about how things could be or should be is an addiction, I realize. We can get over it with some determination. I, for sure, am working on it!