The road more traveled
I have often wondered why I can’t keep track of dates. Why is life such a blur? One sunrise melts into another seamlessly — an incredible continuum.
The only plausible explanation for this could be it’s the same road traveled each day. The same routine followed. It’s this sameness that glues one day to another.
I rise every morning, eyes burning. Sip bland black tea out of a mug and flip through the papers. Breakfast is regulation, a bath and then the generally-uneventful drive to work. Wade through a must-happen snarl at ITO, hit CP and six km downstream pull into an underground parking space.
Days seem to melt into one another in a blur as we take the same road everyday.
Was it always like this? Probably. That’s because I have never lived an extraordinary life. For plain people like me this is necessarily the road travelled. You spend a lifetime waiting at the traffic lights, drive down known streets, meet usual people and go back to doing the things you did yesterday, the day before and the day before.
Surprises come, but rarely. That’s why they are out of the ordinary. You remember them. There are good and bad surprises. They take you to cloud nine and also devastate. I have had both variants in my life.
Even these fade. The colours, the words spoken, the circumstances pale like an old photograph buried in a box under discarded brittle clothes. Surprises get moth-eaten; their corners flake and wear a dull sepia tint.
Life going round and round in circles like a potter’s wheel, days dissolving into a haze, weeks zipping past unexcitingly, pay cheques serving as reminder of months ending.
As a child, left to fend for himself in a Calcutta house where all rooms barring two were empty, I banked on inert instruments to talk to me. Even then the calendar was a sheaf of papers dangling by a thread from the wall. I went to school and came back.
In this friendless existence, I was my best friend and secretly creating different people out of myself – a spin bowler who could tweak the ball any which way, a stylish batsman who smelt the turning ball, a singer who knew every high and low of a difficult song.
A Philips transistor talked to me. A black-and-white Sonodyne TV set showed me whatever it wanted to. An HMV record player sang to me.
Every evening, I picked up my books and sat at a table in the TV room ostensibly to study. Studies never happened. How would they? My eyes were invariably glued to the TV screen. I cheated with finesse seeing everything from Krishi Darshan to Kids’ World.
This was life — placid and mundane. Dates mattered only when exams drew near and I realised I hadn’t turned the pages of my textbooks in months. Examinations were the only upheavals in my otherwise flat life.
Much later when I went to college, dates mattered. I was fortunate to study the subject I loved and remembered important lectures, or a trip to the National Library at Alipore. Listening to a great historian was interesting. A day spent at the library was rewarding.
Four years later I joined work straight out of college. I had always wanted to be a journalist and became one. Ever since, life has been an interminable haze, a long journey through a tunnel.
I remember the newspapers I have worked for and how long but can’t recall the dates of service. How do I keep going? Only through constant reapplication. A new piece written, a new turn of phrase learnt, a wonderful front page designed. Little else. This won’t end in some time. There’s no point looking at dates.
Just keep sailing.
Reblogged this on procrastinatingtanya.