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?
She stood on her tiptoes, turning her profile just so, lips
pursed close to her new husband’s cheek. Her hair flowed freely in the soft
zephyr over the calm ocean. A short, bright-yellow chiffon frock swirled around
her well-proportioned figure. Her husband with ubiquitous knee-length shorts,
tight T-shirt chosen clearly to show off his rippling muscles, stood a little
stiffly until she prodded him to relax. Unobtrusively, she pulled his hand
around her waist and lifted one leg in the universal pose of romance.
The opening scene, however, was not us. It was a young
couple we met on our most recent trip to Phuket via a cruise. We took a boat
from the mainland to an island in the Straits of Malacca. It was a warm
December day, and the boat held an eclectic mix: two honeymooning couples, two
families of four, an elderly mother with a sulky youngish daughter, two
athletic young men and us, the second (or rather, the twelfth!) honeymooners.
The first couple were openly, exuberantly in love. They
tripped over each other trying to get the perfect pictures and enlisted every
passenger at some point to help. We complied indulgently and happily. They were
the very essence of newlyweds: gazing into each other’s eyes, holding hands,
hugging whenever possible. The groom fetched cold drinks and snacks; the bride
smiled, pouted, teased. Their affection was open and refreshing.
They too posed for photographs, but here it was the groom
who took charge, perhaps too much so. He behaved like an excited boy, leaping
at every beautiful sight, clicking away enthusiastically, though not at his
wife. Instead, his lens focused on distant mountains, forests, and waterfalls.
A couple of days later, we saw the second couple again, this
time getting out of a cab. She wrestled with a large suitcase, yelling, “Come
fast or we’ll miss the flight!” He paid no attention, peering instead through
his DSLR at a hedge in bloom, clicking away happily.
