Sunshine. Sunday.

Finally! Sunday. The one day where I don't have to fight with myself to get up at 0633 hours, drag myself out of the bathroom (after trying to brush my teeth with the tube of hair gel instead of toothpaste), clunk the old saucepan with water and milk on the stove to make tea, rush to the other bathroom to bundle clothes to be washed in the machine(and almost bundling in the laundry bag as well)and start chopping onions for hubby's lunch. Today I wake up at a leisurely 0930 hours, saunter to the bathroom, comb my hair, admire my skin in the mirror, spray some of that heavenly perfume on myself and come back to bed where hubby brings in a tray of sweet smelling elaichi tea and butter cookies! Ahh life on a Sunday! I then proceed to spend the next twenty minutes dissecting the morning's social news, a juicy scoop here and a criminal trailer there, punctuated by a list of To-Do chores that have been waiting for me, faithfully, all week. 'Buy groceries, get watch repaired, sort out papers, take in a movie...'-the last one brings another round of excitement- let me see the shows and timings. Then hubby comes in and asks what I am doing. He says it'll have to be in the afternoon coz today's a big football match. This means sacrificing my afternoon siesta. Drat. Life on a Sunday!

Thimbleful of Joy

Today,after almost eighteen years, I picked up the needle and some embroidery skeins for a bit of patchwork. Nothing too elaborate, just a quick cut and stitch job with regular buttonholing to cover up a burnt patch on a large cushion cover. The moment I'd set up my frame(took me a while, yes it did- eighteen years is a fairly long time!) and threaded the whisk of a needle with shaded orange thread, I was transported back to my school days when needlework was as important as Civics and making a sampler of cross stitch or a tea cosy in long stitch was essential to getting passing grade. I remembered the hush that sometimes fell over class, with thirty or more pairs of eyes, hands and needles sewing diligently till the bell rang for the next class, with our class teacher stopping to inspect the tv cover, or handkerchief or even helping with a stubborn stitch. Some of those who were more atheletically inclined would wait impatiently for the class to end, but others (like me) always enjoyed this one thirty minutes where my favourite fantasy would be to imagine that I was Cinderella or Rapunzel, or both (at that age, my knight in steely armour would be none other than our very own Aamir Khan- his QSQT having been released a few months back)embroidering flowers and petals for all I was worth. Our true test of needlework was the annual exhibition, where selected works were displayed on the class Walls (may I gently add that yours truly always made the grade) and other children's parents would ooh and aah over the fine craftsmanship. Years later, I was to hear the same hushed shriek of delight when I presented my mother in law with a set of hand embroidered kerchiefs. I was a little sad when I finished the patchwork. As I slowly wrapped up my needlebox I felt a strange tug in my heart. How much I had enjoyed this one simple activity! But the true reward was when my husband greeted me with a quizzical look and asked ms where I had gotten the pretty new cushion cover from!

Fairweather Family

It hurts, doesn't it? It hurts real bad. When someone you thought was family, takes you for granted, trampling all over you in the shortlived process of finding transient happiness for themselves? That sometimes when you need the familiarity of faces to dampen the anguish/ dejection in your heart, they choose to isolate themselves from the squalor of it all? That the adage: laugh and the world laughs with you, cry: and you cry alone is imminently true? Humans are a selfish race. We turn our heads away from the stark realities of life- both material as well as subconscious. We are rarely there in totality (except for maybe 5% of the breed) when someone needs us the most- because we are battling our own demons. Fairweather Family- they are there only as long as the sun is shining. You get drenched in the rain of sorrow all alone.

Merry Meddlers

At some point in our lives,we have encountered the category called Merry Meddlers. They crop up, uninvited in our daily interactions with life, posing a harmless question here, a rosy retort there. They assume various forms: neighbour, co-worker, cousin, friend- all bearing the same traits of great listening, incredible soaking and then expunging all that embedded knowledge back to us-drop by drop. Their favourite words are 'so', most often presented as 'so...?' even when you don't want to elaborate on your tuppence so... Then,most often spelt out as Then? Or then! When you are clearly at the short end of the Oxford English dictionary. Mostly though, these Merry Meddlers have just one agenda- meddle, interfere and keep meddling some more- to make life for non meddlers an almost curse. But then, lets look at it this way- who else would pay so much attention to the mundane facts of our banal existence if not the Meddlers? So they sit, somewhere in the middle of the hierarchy: between Concerned Family and Just-for-Kicks friends: occupying the vacant slot between carefreeness and care!

Foisting choices

Ever been subjected to choices been foisted onto you? When you have no say in the decision, you are just told to do? Obviously, it's not you who's doing the saying, yet you silently nod in acquiscience- knowing that the denying option does not exist. Then you just sigh inwards and mutter- oh what the heck, what's the difference, if everyone's happy then who am I to complain? But in this seemingly nonchalant attitude, you realise you are sacrifing a bit of yourself. But this realisation doesn't really dawn until you are too jaded to care. And then without much fanfare, you become like one of those Diktants yourself!

The Edge of Impatience

Have you ever realised this?
The edge of impatience is really where patience begins. The feeling that makes you want to explode like a volcano gives way to that funny feeling, which creeps up and tickles the small hairs at the base of your neck, smoothing down your nerves. Like ocean water, washing you down, the waves of patience sweeps over you, leaving fine grains of impatience- just so you don't forget it completely.
Sometimes it makes you feel helpless, most times just exasperated.
When you mutter those golden words to yourself, "God give me patience!", he does just that, giving you so much of patience that you yearn for the event to happen.
They say the fruits of patience are sweet. But nowhere do they say, how long you have to labour for them. There is no time clause. It could be a day, month, maybe years.
By that time, your patience has become so thick, like a layer in your life, that it makes you impervious to any emotion- sad or happy.
So when, the event finally happens, for which you have been waiting so (im)patiently, you are sort of indifferent- thinking to yourself, this was bound to happen, coz I have been patient so long!
The edge of patience, then, is where indifference begins.