The morning tea...

I kept waiting with my glare glued down to that lane from the balcony. The orange shade of the infant sun and that “tea”ish stench of smoke reels wriggling out from the cup in hand, both clubbed to give that peculiar morning air. I am there, after pulling myself off the warm cozy comfort of my bed, neglecting the hundred arms that held me back. That’s one very rare moment when you actually hate winter. It just does not let you start your day, that time of the year when laziness meets freshness. I was there for a reason, something that’s special enough to make me give up a fraction of my priceless winter nap.

There he is, circling around in a kind of restlessness triggered by some expectation, unaware of my sight that was stuck on him. His tail kept wagging to show off the excitement that’s linked to that wait. It’s a weird moment, when you are desperately waiting for someone and you don’t know which direction to look for. And here I see a typical disfigured stray dog stuck in that very similar doldrums. His wait went on and so did mine.

As they say “the best things are simple and unplanned” and it is!!

To be crude with my words, it was a “serendipity”, something that fell on to my scene from nowhere. I guess it was a couple of months before, on another of those sleepy self cursing mornings.I had  a millions reasons to be sad about. My mechanized routine, the ego that gets hurts every hour, complicated love life, confused carrier junctions and even my deteriorating moral values.Things were in plenty to stop myself from smiling. And to add on to this, I had this uncanny knack of shaping up new worries from nowhere, a wizard for a terribly wrong reason. Then neither my tea had this enticing aroma nor the morning rays. It was all dull and grey and a genuine smile was wilder than a wildest dream.

 And then I saw this smile. J

If someone asks me to describe him, it goes like this. A pair of skinny aged arms running up to meet that flat chest, skin sprayed with dirt and as so was the torn clothes.The age had its signatures all over him.A thick array of aged bristles formed a grey canopy over his scalp. And a few pieces of torn and worn out foot gears circled him and that’s his work space. I don’t see any typical ingredients that we usually string with happiness, in or around him. But he was smiling.

The scene had that creepy tail-wagger beside him, with its bliss rudder lashing as swift as possible. And the man was feeding it with something form his dirty heap of collections. All I saw was two creatures doing something that I always kept failing. Something that appeared as an almost impossible task for me, the act of “being happy”!

The next morning, the whole scene repeated itself again.Soon it was a part of my sunrises. Something like a sweet munch with my morning tea. And soon I started waking up without the yelling of my alarm as if I had some real reasons to wake up and set my day rolling. The man and the creature played there role well, and I enjoyed the scene from a distance. A silent happy spectator.

Then one morning, I swiftly cupped my tea and the rushed to the balcony. But only to witness a disappointing scene, as one flavor of the mix is missing. There was that loyal shabby doggy but its morning friend was missing. It was looking around, like expecting him to break in from somewhere. But it didn't happen.

And that was not just a sole day as the dawns that followed had the same story, the same melancholy saga. The waiting dog on the lane and me on the balcony with a cup of tea. But what makes me smile is, we don’t fail in doing this a single morning. We do it with an idiotic regularity. I come to the balcony every morning and see the waiting dog. And I see it walk away dejected after a few minutes. And then I jump into my day.

Today, I dint fail to make myself to the scene and so was the dog. And now I realize, hope, is the thing that life pivots on. Where ever you look, every passing shadow and every shoulder that rubs against you at a street, all are rolling forward on hopes.

For some, it might be a piece of bread, for some it might be a drizzle, for some others it might be a smile belonging to a particular lips and for some, it can be even a hungry stray dog. And then I tasted the last gulp of tea from the mug as I saw the pup walking away. I smiled and I did it really well this time.