Paruammai

It’s about 04:30Hrs and there’s not a single soul or bus in the stand. At about 05:00hrs, a tea vendor rides in on his bicycle. I check with him if there’s a direct bus to Pallavur to which he responds in affirmative stating the first one should be leaving at about 05:30hrs. He even obliges to get me on to the right bus once it comes in - Buses in Kerala are mostly marked in Malayalam and unless you know to read the language, It becomes a bit difficult in boarding the right bus. I’m amazingly pleased and gulp about three glasses of his hot masala tea.Buses start rolling into the stand one by one. It so appears that this gentleman is quite popular in the Bus stand and all the Drivers seem to know him by the name. He individually goes about handing over tea and flower garlands[For the deities in the buses] to each of the drivers. Slowly the Bus stand comes to life with newspaper vendors and the omnipresent ‘Lottery ticket wallahs’. [I’m amazed at how the Lottery fever has struck Kerala. You’d find folks selling tickets at any given point of time at any given nook and corner of the state (religious places included!). Some day I should get back and try figuring out how this whole system works!] ...

Well, today is the ninth day as an ‘Outfoscion’ and despite the initial hiccups the transition has been real smooth. It took me a couple of days to let the feeling really sink in and to get adjusted to the relaxed carefree schedule of my self imposed ‘break’ before I join TFI. The first two days were probably the most demanding in terms of getting ‘acclimatised’. I wake up at seven in the morning and I already have a feeling of not having done anything. Preparing a relaxed breakfast [ as much as I was looking forward to] for some weird reason looked quite boring.12:00 at noon, I realise there’s no company for lunch. And at about six as I sit before the lappy after a long siesta, the peace seemed to be even more troubling than the incessant honks from the traffic that my ear has got accustomed to from the past three years. But after a couple of days it was as if the sea had calmed down altogether. I could swiftly alter my body cycle to adjust to this ’new phase’ of my life and the days are no more ‘boring’. Every other day I’m reminded of some job that I’d long left unattended and to see them being closed out one by one by itself gives me some kind of an achievement…Well, Now is when I guess I best appreciate when people say It’s kinda nice to slow done every once in a while… ...

The bus jerks along on the road as I get back home from Office. It’s only 6:30pm and I’ve still got about 20kms to traverse. That effectively translated to an hour’s time given the traffic situation at M’patnam. A colleague seated beside me is hooked to the Fountainhead in her hands and is already drooping. Damn and I’m here still awake. My gray cells surprisingly show no signs of tiredness and at the same time my mp3 player gets discharged totally.How better can things get ! ...