It's one of those days

Ok. So it’s one of those days when I don’t need to do much, don’t need to think much, don’t need to say much… just sit in front of my computer and stare at the nothingness that the internet promises.

This makes me think. This is not the first time in my life when I have nothing in particular to do. Like I said, it’s just one of those days. When I feel invisible because I’m not in action. When I sit in front of the computer and read up, write and watch stuff. Not bad. Not good. Just stuff. But this precisely makes me think. I have not been working forever. Nor did I have the access to the internet forever! So what did I do for ages on this kind of a day?

I remember, one sultry mid-march afternoon in a mining town in southern Bengal. Hot. Yet breezy. Summer vacations. And a window that gave panoramic view of the entire colony… a shaded-red-gravel driveway. A massive gate. A big playground beyond it. An old banyan tree. Dusty roads. Old bicycles clinking away. The miners quarters, far away. Blue skies beyond them. Cheap Hindi songs floating in the air. And the window seat that was my favourite place in the house. Probably I spent too many “one of those days” sitting at the window, watching the world go by. Watching stuff happen, unfold in front of my eyes. Nothing that I can remember in particular. Yet something that made me like that spot in the scheme of the universe!

And I also remember the terrace. In an ancient part of Kolkata. Amid ugly concrete high-rises. Old. Wet. And claustrophobic. Night sky with no stars, a glum moon, and flickering aero plane lights. Buildings everywhere, as far as I could see, (or couldn’t see!). A night awash with light from pigeon holes all around. Tall coconut trees making wild hissing noises in the wind. And a railway track, somewhere nearby, hidden behind the cluster of concrete – revealed only by the occasional piercing hoots and rumbling wheels. The terrace that witnessed in silence too many of my fanciful moods. And I’m sure I spent a lot of “one of those days” on the terrace.

I remember too many such other ‘dots’ in my history of territorial existence. Too many such places where I have spent - days, nights, hours, minutes, moments – doing nothing. Yet being so busy that so many times I have failed to notice time traveling by me, swishing past me or lazily strolling by! And yes, there’s one thing in common with all of these escapades. They were always solitary! Standing alone. Sitting alone. Thinking alone. Reading alone. Watching alone. Laughing alone. Crying alone. Watching the world go past… alone.

So it’s one of those days, again! And here I enjoy my solitude at my desk. Typing in to my window. And actually liking my new found cubby-hole where I can disappear for hours together and no body will notice that I’m gone!

Whoa!

State of mind? Calm

Song? Faraway by Nickelback

Colour? Yellow