The calendar hanging on the wall moved with the slight breeze, entering from crevices of the windows. Ah, I felt too lazy to get up, but then the allure of the morning hues beckoned and I hastened out. I was late, and the sun was all set to burst on a hustling-bustling world.
The clouds, obsequious in their body language, were almost doubling up, falling all over the sun in their pursuit of filching a few silver lines.
The crows cawed raucously, some birds cruised merrily on the cloud covered canopy. A hoopee and a pigeon sat on a telephone wire, looking around with a torpid air. Yesterday’s relentless rains had turned the ground very squelchy, even the road appeared slippery. Some toads were croaking from some unseen places. Suddenly the surroundings went whoop-whoop-bang-bang.
It was a group of raucous kids who suddenly appeared on the scene and flung themselves into the rain water puddles with war cries. A little distance away sat two kids, perplexed whether to join the fun or not. Another group of boys, all bathed and scrubbed appeared on the scene, smiling all around. All were not of school going age. A tiny tot, not yet two, who had just discovered the hidden power of his legs was cannoning forward, his eyes dancing in mirth, while his dad plodded after him, one hand on his cell phone and the other on his paunch, which seemed to pulsate with an amazing ardour.
During my morning walks, I have realized that there is such a lot of magic hidden in the quotidian and the mundane, only if we looked around, with the wide-eyed wonder of a two year old.
The vegetable vendors, the labourers, the half-clad rag pickers who I meet on my morning walks have nothing much in life, but I have seen them in a state of high excitement, plunging forward in life with songs on their lips. I can never forget the rain dance that the rag pickers broke into when the rain pitter-pattered, or the back-slapping bonhomie of the labourers who had nothing to enrich them but their back-breaking labour.
“Ma, look there is a tulsi plant here,” I turned back to find a mother-daughter pair standing next to some wild flowers fronting our house and bending down to observe it closely, while a tiny bird watched them from the wall with languid interest .
Walk over, I went inside and picked up my cell phone.
A WhatsApp message caught my fancy.
“Why are you so happy?”
“I have no idea.”
“Be happy for no reason. If you are happy for a reason, you‘re in trouble because that reason can be taken away.”
Yes, I am guilty of being happy without any reason. [Ah, the folly of it!]
“You are always on a high!” My family remarks, their smiles well hidden under their fake [or so I hope] sneers.
Yes, I plead guilty to that charge.
And many other charges, besides.
Of complimenting the harassed waiter in a hotel for his charming smile, of asking a grumpy student to go to the washroom and wash away the frown on his face, of amusedly watching a cattle egret pecking at an absolutely nonchalant cow, and bursting into ripples of laughter when a monster crow appears from somewhere, trying to shove down the egret from its perch.
Well, I laugh at the small joys of life, and yes I also laugh at myself for my funny ways. I am still reeling under the shock of the rebuff of my co-passenger in a train, who, just the other day, returned my warm smile with such a cold look which would have definitely given even an icicle an inferiority complex. Well, to each his own.
I look at the cacti, the tall trees against the clouds, the birds on the telephone wires, the squawking parakeets and happily inhale the fragrant air. From some invisible crannies of the mind, strains of ‘Ain’t nothing like the real thing baby’, drift across to me and I am drenched in the real thing. Yes, the real thing, which means different things to different folks, of course.
I dont about other things…but your writings always make me happy. Dictionary also gets happy to find itself of some use. The 😊