And The Sun Rises

When I step out of the house, it’s almost dark. The world around me is still waking up to another day of the week. While I’m struggling out of bed, I always say to myself that I shall sleep in the bus. A few trodden minutes later, when I push myself out of the house and into the bus, I forget what it is to sleep. The sunlight is slowly picking the dark grey and replacing it with warm, golden shine that peeks through the blue of the sky. Small kids totter sleepily to their school buses and a few people quietly wait for their office buses to arrive. I sit in the bus and watch the world wake up slowly, lazily and taking its time. Like there is nothing to hurry about, there is nowhere to go. A quiet, suffused calm pervades while the sun takes its time to ascend. While this is happening, I forget sleep. I forget work. I forget myself. Some 20-odd minutes later, the sun has risen and unpacks its bag while it readies itself for the day. The placidity opens its droopy eyes and takes the light in. The trees on either side of the road look busy as they’ve begun their work for the day. People in their red, blue and white jogging suits or even in plain clothes stretch on the side of the road, bathe in fresh sunlight and run to warm their blood.

Slowly, layers of sleep are peeled off and our bus makes its way on a bridge over a wide creek. Green marshes sprawl as far as your eyes can see and water goes under the bridge; not moving, just lying as if it still has some sleep left in it. While the water takes its time to fill, pink flamingos line the edge of the marsh in solidarity. Not one flamingo is idle, each one of them is busy picking blue-green algae for the day, unaware of humans picking cups of tea and rushing into business suits. Sunlight forms rhinestones on the water and gets stronger by the minute. Gulls enjoy their first flight of the day forming a white chevron on the light blue sky. As the bus crosses the bridge onto the other side, you can see that hurry is slowly diffusing itself into the calm. You can see that people have tumbled out of their houses while you were savouring the waking up of this day. What day is it? You don’t know? It’s just a beautiful morning and you say to yourself, Good Morning.