Against the tide

It's a lovely October morning. Cloudy, warm, just a hint of a rain laden breeze to waken the spirits. It'll get hotter later, but at nine, one couldn't ask for better weather.

I walk on, focusing on the feeling of breathing. It's a good day to be alive. I look around hoping to see smiles, hear a laugh or voices enjoying the calmness that pervades. But everybody looks so tired. Just like me on most mornings. The tiredness doesn't come from staying awake all night, clearing the house of the children's toys and homework or from lying awake thinking of the bills to be paid this week. The fatigue comes from waking each morning and not looking forward to 'work'. Because one would rather be elsewhere, given a chance. Because 'work' is merely an office, a place to shuffle paper while Life goes on elsewhere.. It is this realization somewhere at the back of one's mind that causes the exhaustion, the look in one's eye that doesn't register a feeling when one sees a deformed child asking for a coin. It is what causes young shoulders to stoop, weighed down by much more than the weight of a handbag, a briefcase, a rexine bag that contains objects not required for daily life, but without which one would not be able to make it through the day confidently. I suddenly think : I wish I could work against the tide. Travel in the "opposite" direction, away from the crowds going toward Churchgate/VT in the morning and back in the evening. It's like cattle being transported to the slaughterhouse - a weary resignation dwells in faces that have decided to accept life as it is now as life as it will/should be. There are no choices.

I am tired of being weary.

The only people I see this morning with some enthusiasm and cheer are the hawkers near Astoria Hotel as they go about unpacking their wares. They seem unconcerned, almost happy. Light banter alternates with their task of setting up for the day's business - lack of sales isn't a matter of life, death or a pink slip for them. There's always tomorrow. I wonder if their lightheartedness comes from knowing that they don't have to face the mediocrity of the office, the predictability of paper; and that each morning brings something new - new customers, better luck than yesterday, no policemen asking for bribes. Wish we, the educated, the privileged, the middle-class had the luxury of that self assuredness, that confidence of being one's own master.

Wish I could work against the tide.