Around the world

I am going through my credit card statement that has arrived for the month. I cannot remember all my expenses, so this is quite useful at helping me remember them (and pay up, amicably, before the due date). I pour myself a bowl of milk and I look for the cornflakes. But I can’t seem to find them. I keep looking. And it’s a bit strange (and entirely pointless), but let me tell you what comes to my mind at this moment. I think of what must be going on around the world in these few minutes that I am searching for my cornflakes.

A tram with the tinkling bells, somewhere, would have set out cutting through the city’s early morning mist, and the quietness. Somewhere else, a couple would have finished supper, and sitting by the fireplace, would be talking about putting out the Christmas lights on the outside of the house. People would have woken up, at another place, with dreams stills smeared on their eyes, and layers of snow on their doorstep. At yet another place, individuals must be hastening to work, boarding the trains and the buses, with their backpacks, and music plugged in their ears. Flocks of birds would be flying however many miles to reach their wintering sites. Travelers would be trotting around the world climbing mountains, camping on an island, or visiting a museum or a monument.  It must be the breakfast news on the BBC in one city. In another city, Carrefour would be filling shelves by the night. KFC’s must be opening or shutting down in different corners of the planet. FedEx would be handing over countless packages around the world. Hundreds of airplanes must be in the sky, flying across continents.  A restaurant must be taking the last orders, somewhere. A congregation would be offering a noon prayer at a countryside chapel, somewhere else. And still somewhere else, a mall would be bustling with morning shoppers and children playing on the bouncy castle. And I finally find them (the cornflakes- well done for paying attention), or this probably could go on.

You must be thinking what is it with a person who cannot remember his expenses, or find his cornflakes, and pointlessly wonders? There are days like this when it takes me a few long hours to completely wake up, after having impulsively got out of bed!

We all have stories to tell

My mother would handknit a sweater for me every winter when I was a kid. Winters were what I looked forward to also because it would be time to pull out of the cupboard my full pants and wear them- I was always so thrilled and I felt like a grown-up when I wore them. On the last day at school, I was almost in tears, imagining that from the next day I would no more get to meet all my friends- friends who I have been with from my kindergarten, friends who have been friends for nearly my whole life. I would get several boxes of firecrackers, during the festivities, and light them. I kept groping for rhyming words at my first attempt to compose a poem. Time and again, I bossed over my pets as they were the only ones younger to me at home. These are bits and pieces of my story.

And it must be similar to yours. So frequently, do we all not talk about our childhood pride of owning a bicycle, and riding down miles into the woods with friends, for a picnic on the New Year’s Day? And the small pocket money, as a young boy, and a bigger list to spend on? Or our remarkable efforts, much later, at gaining a foothold in life? It is only instinctive for us to be wanting to tell our stories!

I was speaking with one of my newer colleagues the other day who recently came back to India. She was in the US for a couple of years with her husband who had taken up a job there. She was at home with plenty of free time. And she decided to practise painting. With the Michaels Store in the same lane as she lived, she picked up her colours, brushes, charcoal and canvasses, and painted for hours every day. I looked at her blog site and I found she uploaded more than 400 sketches which she created during that time- they are absolutely brilliant ones, and most notably, each one has a story to tell. She must have had a lot to share!

We all do. We write books, publish blogs and make films because we all have stories to tell. The boatmen as they ferry or the minstrels as they wander on the paths of the hamlets sing, telling their tales. It is why Paulo Coelho does what he does. We accumulate our lives’ anecdotes of triumphs and embarrassments, faithfulness and refusal, bitterness and love, to narrate them. Events intervene, and thus, continues our enchanting storytelling.