Dreary Dreams of the Day

  The sun is out and proud, but I am shielded by my curtains. I sit up, trying to focus on how I woke up. I vividly recall the faint echoes of my Mom waking me up, only, she is in my dreams. Habits, they die hard.

Making the bed, brushing, shitting- Habits again. Routine- interesting, when I was only getting used to civility, mundane now. Excitement has been chucked out. All that stays is a rhythm, a familiarity. 

Comfortable, yes. Dreary? Yes. Scary? Sometimes.

Breakfast also has a set routine. I decide to go along, because getting off routine is also rhythmic, usually aligning with Uterine Moods. Today though, its different. It's unsettling and makes me restless. I am scared of set routines today. I don't want the cycle today.

I get to college, and find out that the Universe has aligned with me. Classes are cancelled and I am free the whole day. So much for time tables.

That phrase stays. Time tables. Time is also an ally, but it has to measure me against its other possibilities. "Please, just yell out Carpe Diem! already". It seems disappointed. I am not surprised. I valued stability over random disappointing. Turning back, I walk halfway to the metro station, almost decided to go back to the room, do nothing other than expected - watch a movie perhaps, get nostalgic, think about all the time at home I took for granted, watch Little Women for coziness and inspiration, maybe.

Yes that sounded like me.

But the predictability of it gave me annoyance rather than familiarity. I wanted to be dynamic. I wanted to be the person I imagined myself as.

The day stretched before me, and Delhi filled me with its tempting aromas of food and flavour of fiction blended with fact. 

This city. The city of my making. It could define me, as it did Balram Halwai from White Tiger. I guess she understands and moulds herself for her million inhabitants. Dynamically static, regal and modern  - the city of my dreams.

I take out my phone, google the path to the Public library and heads forth. Switching between pre-set metro lines, weaving a dynamic into the static  route of the Delhi metro, I reach the library. Walk in, breathe. The words fill my lungs. I want to scream. 

"Behold world! I am It. Dynamically static. Diligently following routine, even when skimming away from it. Skating away from myself, yet running into her. I am Nature's pattern. And I am not the only one"

Because then, the world around reorients. I see patterns. I see people walking away from their routines, only to run into it. And I see people comfort themselves with the routine, when life itself seems a little overwhelming, when the big things are so huge that you need the little things to keep going.

Walking in, I breathe. I laugh, maniacally.

I am startled into consciousness by the whistle from the cooker, telling a different routine - of my mother's, my father's, my family's. Looking around, I see the dream cocoon of the words have dissolved. I look around for my brief respite from habit - but like change, it has blended in the air around me, making it difficult to notice. 

That wake up dream is now mine, but only to be reminisced about, never to feel and experience, as new. The intrigue about the unknown has vanished. Now I know the feeling.

Now I have come back to the routine. I lie back onto my pillow and cry.