Changeling

A singular incident happened two days ago. When I come to think of it now, in a state of total recall, I can only label it as special. A special time in my young hungering life as a fresh engineering graduate when I had planned to include some tasks into my empty schedule and set down my priorities to do something after jotting them down. A special event in which momentous thrills boffed me up on the winds of a dormant zest. But it wasn't really the first time that something like this had happened. Surely one of the few similar experiences. But each one felt different too, in spite of having almost the same elements. Hence the singularity.

This particular epiphany occurs when you, after having written down some personal goals for the next day (which you would definitely forget to follow if they are not written down) and deciding to get on with them, give in to an inveterate fecklessness and end up moping around in the room. You are unfocussed, your mind wandering in multiple directions. More time elapses, and still, you do not act to overcome the laziness. You know you've been in a similar situation before, many times, and the delay, the postponement of the task is going to do just that: delay it, and still, you are not trying to get out of the state of inertia which sooner or later, leads you getting overwhelmed by shards of nagging guilt. They will prick as long as you remain inactive. So to blunt their edge, you put on one of your favourite tracks on the speakers before beginning any real work, thinking of commencing after listening to 'just this one song', making sure that the speaker volume is at an optimum (actually low) level so that the neighbours do not get disturbed. You close the door and latch the windows of your room on the first floor before playing the music. For it is some hours after midnight, the trees waving slightly with the weight of the leaves, the October air cool and moist, and the choir of traffic a bare minimum, when the denizens of the 'mohalla' are curled up in their beds, fast asleep, away from the holds of anxieties and tensions in their lives, if only for the night. They have an early bus to catch in the morning or commute using their private vehicles. The kids have to rush off to school, the mothers have to go for their daily morning stroll in the park, the adults to their shops and offices. The day to be spent talking, laughing, studying, staring, negotiating, haggling, persuading, maybe even fighting and sobbing. We don't know which of these activities will define the day. Will they be the ones that make it worth remembering or will  they be the ones that make it forgettable, leaving us longing with the anticipation of a better one? 

The four years of engineering are over. They have not slunk away unnoticed. It is not like as if that time has flashed by you. Yes, it seems like it was yesterday but it isn't. The years have lived through you, changing you bit by bit over a gruelling phase, as you would prefer to call it. You have been transformed into an individual who one day if caught by the collar and accosted, might surprise you. The child that once was is no more. Someone else has replaced him. Intentionally or otherwise? You will never know completely. Sometimes we are conscious of the change in us but most of the times we are not. Still, a defiant child nevertheless who does not wish to grow up in a society that seems to know everything it wants to tell you to do, only not knowing its own frailties at advising and a lot of other things.

While you are busy pondering and mulling over this often thought about, stale realisation, the song which you had put on dissolves into the dulcet flavour of another favourite and then another.

You don't have to go to work tomorrow and slog from nine to five, or even get up early. A confusing phase of life (I hope it is short!), as you are not employed yet, and still living off your parent's hard earned money. The search for a suitable job is on. Sitting on your chair, a knotted tension in your head, a premonition of fear rankling within your chest, a clawing insecurity about the future, you are in the dark about what the future holds for you. No matter how hard you try to dispose of the feeling, it still comes back and wraps itself around your mind. The muted protestations of other thoughts, to smother the gradually building up dejection, have become inaudible.

A quiet period of time elapses, before the songs hit you with a rare electric intensity, so much that you gain the strength of a lifetime in seconds, bundled up quanta of instantly gratifying energy, within those moments of reverie. The ongoing playlist has ruffled some unopened chapters inside and when you decide to read them, you feel the doubts slowly ebbing out of your body, the tension uncoiling. You are surprisingly glad to find a nice spot and recline within that old, reassuring cosiness that you know so very well. And you are brave enough to love that moment with a frenzied tenacity, a moment of fleeting triumph when you don't want to know about, even deny the very existence of the next day of your life. You want the present, not the future. You want to live, not worry.

It is a curious experience. A curiously uplifting experience.