90 Seconds

       When the cab stopped at my gate this morning, I was all sulky. The thought of having to spend a beautiful Saturday at work did not appeal to me at all. As I got in, I rolled down the window and settled in my seat, determined to make the most of the morning drizzle! My mind immediately drifted off to think about how cozy and nice it would be to snuggle up under my giant comforter at home, with the windows open! Huh, that did not help my mood at ALL L it was just so unfair that I should be out and about on a weekend morning!

      We reached the main road. At 8 in the morning on a drizzly Saturday, the roads were a little less busy than on the normal days. The signal turned red ….my cab driver stopped and immediately got on his phone to let the transport guy at office know that we were on our way. A traffic policeman in his raincoat was muttering something under his breath. A transvestite, dressed in all her glory, complete in a red sari and chocolate brown lipstick, was moving from vehicle to vehicle, clapping her hands and demanding alms. A little street kid, lurking on the footpath, caught my attention. She was standing there, holding a loop, something that looked like a hoola-hoop. The minute all the vehicles had stopped at the signal, she put her loop on the pavement and moved a few feet away. She then did a somersault and landed INTO the loop on the ground. Within the next half minute or so, she twisted and turned her young body in a million ways, contorting herself into numerous shapes WITHIN the loop! It was still drizzling outside. But she went about her business, trying her best to entertain people stuck at the signal. And then she looked at the timer of the traffic signal. She still had another minute. Immediately, she ran from one vehicle to the other, collecting the coins that people gave her.

       The transvestite had completed her round by then and waited on the pavement watching the child collect her alms. My driver was getting impatient. The traffic policeman could not hold his mutter down anymore. He started raining curses on a biker who was trying to jump the signal. Within the next few seconds, all eyes were on the timer.

     The driver, wishing it would tick faster.

    The transvestite, wishing the vehicles would start moving slowly, so that she could collect her due from a newer batch of vehicles.

    The street child, wishing the signal would stay red a little longer so that she could collect coins from all the vehicles stuck at the signal.

    The traffic policeman, keeping a keen eye on the timer to ensure he gets his hand signals out at the right time.

    And I, indifferent to the changing colors of the traffic signal, completely lost in the beauty of this morning, watching the driver, the policeman, the transvestite and the child judging their next move based upon the changing traffic lights.

   The signal finally turned green, the drizzle was now increasing in intensity…the rain drops were getting bigger….the driver started the cab, the policeman blew his whistle and waved his hand, the transvestite was already walking towards the other side of the road…the side where the lights had now turned red. The little girl was holding on to her loop and running towards the red light lane, grinning as the rain drops lashed against her almost bare back.

    As my cab moved forward, I turned to my left to catch a last glimpse of the characters of my 90 seconds movie.

  The transvestite was  clapping her hands again. The child was getting ready to do a cart wheel. The policeman was screaming at yet another wayward driver……And my driver was turning the radio on…

It was no longer drizzling. It was raining. The policeman ran into his traffic island shelter, the transvestite put her sari over her head. The child….the child continued to twist herself into the metal loop. In the pouring rain…Grinning from ear to ear…While the rain lashed against her bare back.....

   My mind drifted off again to think about my warm bed and my cozy comforter….And I felt blessed! Working on a Saturday did not seem so bad at all…The 90 seconds movie had done it's job....I said a silent prayer and thanked Him for having given me a life that did not depend on the changing lights of a traffic signal….

Its strange where life’s lessons come from….

Is the world a stage, is our life a play ?

          I find it very difficult to accept or even assume that our lives are already charted out and pre-defined by a bigger force and that we are but actors on a stage, playing our roles and waiting for our exit some day. That kind of resignation takes away the very beauty of life...The thrill, the suspense, the wait, the hope and the dreams. If everything is already designed, defined and laid out in black and white, what are we expected to do? Where do we put to use, the spirit of being alive and human? We are capable of emotions, capable of thinking, judging, taking decisions and facing consequences. Wouldn’t the theory of pre-designed life kill the very purpose of our living?

          I believe that life is a series of decisions. At any point in time, we are offered choices. Each choice will have its own set of consequences.  We choose, we face the consequence. Along the way, we may stumble, make bad decisions, and make a few choices that may seem absolutely illogical and foolish in retrospection. However, at the end of it all, we know that what we are today is not a matter of just chance or luck, but the outcome of conscious decisions taken along the way.

          We spend sleepless nights, fervently praying and wishing for miracles, we seek answers and ask questions and have never-ending conversations with the higher power we believe in…..When things go our way, we celebrate. When things go out of hand, we sulk. We wonder what went wrong. We wonder if all the dreams and prayers were just a distraction meant to prepare us for what has already been planned.

            What we do not realize though, is the fact that, through each of these situations, the happy ones and the sad ones, without our conscious knowledge, we are growing in strength. Strength of character, of intelligence and fortitude. Preparing ourselves better by learning life’s ways of teaching lessons. Learning to take things in stride, learning to look for a silver lining and learning to stay positive through the toughest of times.

           We can choose to live out our time, smiling through the happiness, learning through the troubles and hoping through the uncertainties OR we can spend our time worrying if our happiness will end, if our troubles will increase and our uncertainties will continue to exist.The choice is again ours ! The beauty of it though, lies in the fact that though the choices are endless, the time is not! :)

           The way I see it, life is too good to be true. Too spontaneous to be pre-planned. Too alluring to be resigned to fate. . And too short to be wasted away in ignorance. Life is a realization. And the higher power we believe in? It’s like a lighthouse. Meant to guide us and help us choose the way. But the ultimate choice? Well, it is STILL ours :)

I dream, therefore I am...

      There is never a day that goes by without me thinking about how it would be to do absolutely nothing in life, but just sit back and watch each day go by, sipping on a tender coconut, reading a forgotten novel and whiling away the afternoons under a cool banyan tree. I am a dreamer. And I have a mad life.”Mad” in a nice way sometimes and “mad” in a not-so-nice-way sometimes. But all it takes for me to escape this madness is to just shut my eyes, sit back and dream. I have read like a billion quotes till now that keep reiterating the importance of building dreams. But never did it’s importance really occur to me until I actually grew up and tasted life!

     As a kid, I did make my dreams. But life has been kind enough to refuse to fulfil them but in turn gifted me with a reality that is far more pleasant than any dream I could ever come up with. There were confusing phases when nothing made sense, when everything seemed to go the wrong way and I thought I simply had to give up and stop being a dreamer. But eventually, I have come to realize that though not many dreams translated into reality, my ability to dream has more than made up for any loss that reality might have made me feel :)

     I have passed through a phase in life when “dreaming big” was the mantra. Somehow, for me, this “dream big” mantra has a very materialistic ring to it. At least, honestly, when I was a true believer of dreaming big, it was always about a super-successful career, a rich life, full of fun-filled moments, extended overseas holidays, a Jacuzzi in the backyard and a personal indoor spa . I may have been naive in believing that “ big dreams” had to be only about success,name and fame in life, but for me, that’s the connotation of “big dreams” I had as a growing teenager.

      Later in life(that is now), when the life-map has begin to make sense and when all the materialistic dreams are not very far away from being fulfilled( a decade is not very far, I believe :) ), I am at crossroads. With a little planning and smart execution of plans, I can get all I want. But no, just when I have everything at hand’s reach, I want to go back and grab all those times when I wished I would be what I am today. As a kid, I could not wait to grow up! And now, as a grown up, I want to go back and be the kid that I was! Why would I want to do that? One reason of course, is the clichéd attraction for childhood memories. Life has it’s way of making the past look more cheerful than it actually was. So yes, maybe that is why I would want to go back. But no, there is more to it than just that. It is the rare gift that only children possess. The gift to dream endlessly. The gift to dream fearlessly.

       For a child, everything is possible. Right from morphing into Batman to sprouting wings when you wake up in the morning, every fantasy is a possibility. Even the wildest of dreams of a child, have a ring of reality and a hope of possibility attached to it. But for an adult, the innocence is gone. Having seen life and it’s various turns, every dream is plagued by the unavoidable evaluation of pros and cons. The urge to be realistically fantasized is really strong. You are aware of the hurdles, the hardships, the turmoil, the testing times and the absolute surrender to the fact that “maybe” this dream will never come true.The “fearless” quality of dreams is gone! And the urge to be real rules over everything else..

      I want to go back to those times when I checked the scrapped pencil shavings inside my book to see if they had morphed into a peacock feather, when I used to put coins into a piggy bank and wished that I could buy the neighbourhood park with that money, days when I prayed to God to give me the ability to read the time from a clock that had no numbers on it (yes I was petrified of clocks that had no numbers on them ) and days when I swallowed a hailstone that had fallen into our frontyard because I truly believed that it made humans immortal :) There is something strangely alluring about the innocence of those times. When they said “Ignorance is bliss” , I baulked. But now I understand that in one sense, ignorance truly is bliss.

      Having come to a turn in life where “dreaming big” is not the mantra anymore, I am now a follower of small dreams. I do not yearn for a Jacuzzi anymore, nor do I want a personal spa. The life that I look forward to in my older days now, is simple,uncomplicated and highly unmaterialistic. Now, when I sit by the open window, watching the rain, I dream of the place where I want to be in very soon.

      It is a small cottage, with a well in the backyard, a banyan tree in the frontyard, a small garden swing, a wooden bench by the wall, picket fence on all four sides, a jasmine creeper by the front door, an armchair, an old grandfather clock inside the house, a well stocked kitchen ( the foodie in me ) and one room full of bookshelves along the wall, filled from the ceiling to the floor, with all the books that I have managed to collect in my life. :)

      Now, the biggest “small” dream of my life, is to get to a point in time when I can afford to spend my days in that humble cottage, sitting on the garden swing, reading a book, watching the bullock carts go by, listening to the crows caw aloud in the afternoons, feeding the stray dog , building up a bonfire in the garden on cold evenings and spending long nights in my library, writing my book :) And just like that, I want to be able to live each day away and pray for a long life to live through more such days of blissful existence!

      And until that day actually comes by, I will continue to sit by my window, close my eyes and dream...And I will do all that it takes to get there :) Even if it means finding my way through my “mad” life right now ! :) And no, that is not my retirement plan...I would very much love to be there right now! :)

                         
         Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today.”