A Perfect Picture

There is something bizarrely blissful about waking up in your own bed. When I say my own bed, I mean the bed I have woken up in for 22 years…not just any bed in a dusty overhyped town in north India. It has been some time away from home now. I am going on the ninth month presently. It isn’t a new life or a new city for me anymore. I was never really the sentimental types to miss home and family to be brooding over the idea of staying far away from home for too long. In fact, the thought hardly ever crossed my mind. From the moment I arrived, I was one determined bull dog. I hadn’t come here to settle down. I had come here to take what I had to take and leave. Till this day, that thought drives me on. Like a vagabond, refusing to settle down and uncertain of my next destination. Sometimes I feel I tend to become too hungry. Everything takes its own time. That time is good. It teaches you a lot of things. And the world and its people aren’t exactly the types who would step aside and let you pass just because you are running very fast and making a lot of noise about it. They would rather box you in from all sides, burn the rubber of your wheels, slow you down and suck you in…suck you in to their own sweet pace which seems to you to be as good as stagnant. That’s how the world is actually. It really doesn’t matter does it? Whether you admit it or not, you NEED those fellows. They are the ones who make you look “awesome”. If everybody thought like you and everybody worked like you want them to, then you wouldn’t be enjoying all the attention you are getting now would you? So you accept them for who they are. You can’t control them…besides they are inherently confused. So just let it be.

Ahhhhh where was I ? The waking up in your own bed part… Wake up and you know you don’t have to worry about breakfast. There happens to be an elderly lady sitting in the veranda wondering what to make for you. You happen to call her your mother. Bathroom time is also fun. Singing at the top of your voice on the pot is so much more satisfying than having to wash clothes in the bucket. The smell of omelette fills the air. It has been SO long that you have had an omelette that the smell alone is filling enough. You eat more breakfast than the entire food you have all day on other days. Even before you finish your food, you proudly announce what you want to have for lunch. It seems impossible that you might even feel hungry before dinner time if you take into consideration the two eggs that you gobbled down with the bread and baked beans. I forgot to mention the peanuts you kept munching on while the eggs were being fried.

After breakfast it is time to read the newspaper…the newspaper which has been reduced to a 10 minute reading marathon in your PC at work every morning. There isn’t really a lot happening around the world to make headlines…just a crazy lady doing a bad job posing to be the Chief Minister of a perpetually hopeful state. It is more a comic relief than any headline. When you are done, you go and lie down...amongst the familiar smell of fried fish and the clanking of metal vessel from the neighbour’s kitchen. You lie down on your stomach and stare out of the window. The sparrows still come to sit on the branches of the tree in your courtyard. You wonder if they are the same sparrows who used to come 8 months ago. Probably not, you tell yourself. There is a sudden weight on your back! It makes you cry out in pain. You try to fight it off…but it just keeps on getting heavier! Before you know it, there is a whole lot of hair on your neck and you can make out a hard temple pushing against you shoulder blades! As the weight decreases and hands grab your sides and squeeze your breath out, you know its your Dada. The bear hug relaxes and he collapses on top of you like a dead weight. It feels kind of good and you wish he stays like that forever…yet after a few seconds you groan at him to get off like you have always done. And as he lies there beside you, both of you gaze at your father…in his trademark whites. He sits at his table scribbling something. He never seems to run out of things to write. You stare at the wrinkles on his forehead. He catches a glimpse of the two of you, lazing like sloths on the bed. For an instant you can see the edge of his lips curl in a smile and his chest inflates a few inches. He goes back to his scrawnings and scribbling. That very moment…in mid April…on a not so hot summer day…in the panting City of Joy…in a place called home, you were part of a perfect picture.