Bending

Life has been packed neatly into days and days into hours, each allotted its specific task, these past few weeks. Compartmentalising life has its own benefits. Thought-numbing life patterns induce activity of a different kind. Mind games are stilled but moments at hand are magnified. And yet, during the interim minutes, when I walk from one compartment into another, I pause for a moment. When I suddenly find myself fingering the callus on the side of the thumb that is still getting used to the hold of the violin bow and jump out of the train of concentrated activity or when I look up from my book to see the speeding grey landscape from inside a taxi or when I hear the peculiar strains of a familiar song, for a split second I try to find reasons. For incidents, turning points, bumps on the road and life itself. But only for that fleeting second, I weaken. With one gulp I swallow the thought chain along with the lump in my throat.
Home alone, I find myself at the kitchen doorway, once again an unconscious break from the task at hand. My eyes adjust to the pitch darkness, slowly responding to the hide and seek of new light - the brilliant blue of the gas flame against the stainless steel of the pressure cooker and rays distilled by the pouring rain playfully carressing the polished granite - a game that undresses familiar forms revealing new layers and dimensions. I linger for another moment, another and yet another. Words would not do justice to the interplay of light and granite molecules, the bursting energy of the cooker powered by the serene, unchanging blue flame, nor would freezing it into pixels. I want to hold on to it, pin it down. I am trying to understand by defining and limiting, by drawing thought lines extending to boundaries, blinding me of possibilities. It is a realisation that takes me away from myself, and makes me a silent observer, unable to do anything but soak in the moment, to take it fully and to move on to the next one, each sublime in its own way.

I am learning, slowly but surely.