Still...and then begin

-
I have a ceramic mug. It’s moss green with dark brown lines smudged on it so that it looks like the bark of a tree. I don’t usually use it but today I decided to. Mood. I got some hot water and went to the break room for a tea bag. And I don’t think I’ll ever live to say this again – the break room was empty.

There were no people and there was no noise. The bean bags lay squished in one corner. It was too delicious a moment to pass up. I have this gift of instant disregard that I used now to ignore my busy day ahead. I sat on one of the bean bags, clasping my warm cup of tea like a precious pearl and looked out the window.

The sights were nothing spectacular, just as unheard symphonies are. There was a huge froth of cloud that had a hole in the center – as if a straw had been dipped into it and then removed. An eagle flew in perfect poise within this spot, an unknown picture in a celestial frame. The steam from my cup whimsically made spidery webs before it trailed away somewhere. It was so calm, it was so still.

The mind did not think, the heart did not feel, the body did not move, the conscience did not twinge….nothing happened. There was just so much peace, in the unexpected ordinariness of an empty break room. I remembered this line from a movie, ‘Rog’ – it felt as if you’ve put your head on the chest of the Universe and heard its heartbeat.

Thus, I began my day.

Comments

Anonymous said…
What a lovely way to begin a day. It would be a lovely way to end it too.
12:27 PM
Nagesh Pai said…
Was it a sunday?? or maybe you reached office early.. He he kidding... but i enjoy similar moments at my office most of the days when i reach early.

Thanks for logging in to my blog and leaving your comment, Mukta!

Cheers!
Nagesh
3:39 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Check (the) mate

-
My cousin, who was born sixteen hours before me, got married recently. I am expected to follow her footsteps soon. Thankfully, I have been granted more than sixteen hours to do that. My father’s health has taken a turn for the worse. My mother is completely exhausted. Rationally, points 1, 2, and 3 would be distinct from each other. But in my family there is no such thing as ‘rationally’. Therefore all these points are inter-related. Strangely, here, we believe my marriage to be an antidote to mortality and fatigue. I happened to be sitting in my parents’ room while Ma looked through Papa’s blood reports. They didn’t look good. Ma was worried and Papa didn’t help matters much. He kept talking about Sourav Ganguly and why he deserved better. Ma got further agitated and after flinging the reports somewhere inconvenient to retrieve (I should know), she snapped, “So what? There are many like him.” Papa doesn’t believe that and would have no one in his family believe that either. He went to...
Read more

Not the same, all the same - Rang de Basanti, being a Hindu, uniform civil code, and Hostage – in that unrelated sequence

-
I watched ‘Rang de basanti’. That, however, is not the point. Everyone now wants to go to Delhi and cruise around in jeeps at night. And that too is not the point. I need to say something. That, really, is the point. ‘Rang de…’ is a good movie but frankly, I’ve seen better. I’ve seen ‘Yuva’. It is creditable, though, that the movie could say what it did without using the ‘sage on the stage’ (as we say in Instructional Design) approach. The movie does have a couple of ideas that I have been besotted with for a long time now. One is the life of a story. There is the germ of an idea about men who go to their deaths cheerfully. There is fascination about what could inspire such courage in ordinary people. That story lays inside a diary for a long time. How long? Long enough for history to play itself out and begin the process of repeating itself. A nation goes the ‘Animal Farm’ way – humans out, pigs in. The story lays untouched – fermenting in latent vigor. Then someone discovers it. She ...
Read more

Save the Indian (male) child

-
This isn't exactly a feminist tirade, but this is written by a woman, and it is written in annoyance. You raise your girls to be sweet, strong, and independent. (Wise parents teach their children to listen to opinions and discard or heed accordingly. The other ones just teach their kids to bullshit everything that everyone says. Still others bring up girls to be on guard and forget that spine so that everyone thinks well of them. I am not sure which is worse, but I detest people shoving their opinions down other people's throats in a show of liberation, so I'll lean towards the former. But only slightly.) As the gender construct of being a 'female' is pushed even further, you teach your daughter complicated activities – driving, perhaps, sending them off away from home, wearing a sari (those freaking pleats!), cooking and de-veining prawns for added advantage. At the end of that, you have a person who genuinely dislikes blending into anything, doesn't like bei...
Read more