Simple Pleasures

 

I squinted against the bright sunlight at the small black insects that were again attacking my beautiful yellow hibiscus. All the swear words had completed echoing in my mind and so to say, I was speechless at that moment in time. The gardener and I have been waging a war against these pests for the last four months. Every-time I write an epithet for these pesky pests and sit back contentedly, they conjure themselves up from thin air! We have used pesticides everywhere but they don’t seem to work and I have almost given up hope.

After about more than two decades I sat knitting in the sun. I remember the aunties sitting in the garden and knitting on a winter afternoon. I also remember me curling up my lips (mentally!) at them. How can you waste a lovely winter afternoon knitting? Isn’t it better to play or read a book or simply curl up under the quilt and dream? But college never gave us so much of free time- though we did laze around in the garden when we bunked a particular class. Sunday afternoon post lunch was dedicated to simple pleasures and winter afternoons meant I could go to the terrace and put a mat and sleep under the quilt; my face under it creating an artificial darkness and snooze. See the dichotomy of the whole exercise- I wanted the heat of the sun but not its light!

Here I loved the pictorial black dots on my yellow hibiscus but didn’t want the insects who give me so much of visual pleasure! But that’s reality. It is very possible that we like a person a lot but do not like his dress sense or food habits. The trick is in accepting the ore and extracting the gold!

I have this sudden creative urge and like jack of all trades I can’t decide what to do, I do everything. I have been experimenting with food (Those who don’t know me –I am supposed to hate cooking!); I have started a new painting; I am editing my ‘book’; knitting and now I am planning on stitching! Like jack I am “master of none’ either! In short I am experimenting with ‘simple pleasures’.

I am master of my time now. I can do whatever I want and when I want, for most of the days. This freedom sometimes makes me feel guilty that everyone is working so hard and I am doing things which give me pleasure. I have just discovered the happiness of simple pleasure. Very recently I woke up to the fact that I am not going to change the world; not because I cannot but because I will not, as the world has already changed me. The reasons and equations which used to fire me are no longer there to egg me on and also because I understand the reason and the conditions much better. I have turned my daily chores into pleasurable tasks!

A few months back, I used to feel frustrated that I cannot fast forward the thought process of many a young mind for “I had been there ... done that ...”but now I have left that phase far behind. The sea and the surf, the green water and the blue sky are incessantly doing their duty and like they have successfully changed me they will change them or turn them to the path made for them (No right or wrong here!) I find simple pleasures in their falling down and getting up strongly to follow their destiny.

These days I have been downloading my favourite old songs and singing when I am alone. Those of you who have not partaken of this simple pleasure do it soon. It gives you a kind of joy which you rarely get to touch these days. The low notes and the high notes trill your sensibilities to a kind of high which can give a good completion to the thrill of falling in love for the first time!

Today in the morning I felt both proud and old. Proud because my off spring touched the magic figure of twenty one and old because “Oh my God I am a parent to an adult!” but the pleasure outweighed the down and here I am musing on simple pleasures.

The sea clean and clear hits against the black rocks, never getting dirty. It cleans the rocks absorbs the sand and dirt and still remains clean. Again and again it repeats its motion, sound and force; never tiring; happy in its insular world of water, sand and rocks. I am like the man made concrete block put at the edge of the sea. I allow the sea to cut and file my edges to suit its mood. Should I have been like the sea which even when blockaded continues to chip away and shape its destiny like it desires to? Should I be as insular and focussed as the elements of nature? Will I then get more pleasures out of my simple pleasures?