Total Connect

Now that the time lag in writing and publishing the post has gone down to zilch, theoretically, do I have to be more cautious and aware…or can I still be my own free self? The ink drying time has been chopped out of the process.

It seems like the time, the artist lets his work of art sit in his workshop, letting the sun’s rays dance around it, play with it, sometimes dramatically and sometimes, totally ignore it while the delicious beauty sits ignored in a dark corner, seemingly forgotten but still being viewed in this new non-light as a totally new entity, and when ready (or so we think), its gets hung in a gallery, put on display with a tag next to it, marking it for life, a new, more understood dimension added to its core. The price tag. An extension that had no meaning at the time of conception or during its birth. But the appendix that will define the creation from the outside and in all probability, inside as well.

The time when you mark your seats in the seating chart and get yourself advance tickets to a movie on the very day the plans open and the feeling of them rested in your wallet add a brisk in your step and a hi-note in all the songs that you keep singing and fantasizing, waiting till the day of the show…until you devour it, turn judgmental about it. From then on, it starts to turn stale.

The furtive fingers dial the phone number in a hurry, out of memory, of course, and while the call is being seen through, a million possibilities of the conversation that will follow flash through your mind. A zillion what-ifs, a bi-zillion what-if-nots and then some more. Your mood on the other end, the physicalities of your being when you pick the call, will you or wont you pick the call, is this the right time, place, way?? Will there ever be a right time, place, way??? Am I sure? Will you be sure once I say it to you? And then sometimes, nothing happens, no thoughts, no possibilities, nothing. Just a deep, dense white calm. All this while the call is being seen through to you and then I hear the phone ringing at your end…and I wait and I savour it.

Guess what? I am pregnant, she announced and then the waiting started. At first, it didn’t even set in, the waiting. The altered state of things to come would come to her suddenly, unannounced, without any prior notice or pattern and would leave her at once breathless and euphoric. And then, it sank in deep. Every step, every breath, every thought began to add to the reality of the future. The ending of me and the movement of the small little ‘us’ robbed her, denuded her of the layers and deposited them on the other new bank on the opposite side of the river. The winds, they too, began to change. The tides and even the birds (she thought) changed their courses anticipating the altered settings. The landscape would change altering the soil, the topography of the land and horizon. It began to sink in deep now. The incessant watching of the time, the change in trimesters, and her body reacting to all changes small or miniscule…or wait, was it the body changing with time and causing all else to move and readjust around it? The waiting remained the only constant, a provider of solace in all things different. She came to love the waiting more than the changes or the reducing distance to the finish line. The wait seemed filled with hope, thrill. The promise of happiness and a sense of fulfillment. The gift-wrapped present, sitting on the bed holding the promise of a surprise that may not live up to the heightened heartbeats. The wait always worked for her.

And now the ink drying time has been chopped off. I will need to search for alternate highs, new stopovers to make my shortcut-ted speedy journey noteworthy.