Its 6 o'clock late in the evening and I am the only one in office watching my Saturday disappear slowly amidst the clouds, soon a depressing twilight will descend all over Old P.O. Street announcing the day's slow demise and I shall still be in office waiting for it to be 8 o’ clock.
6.30 pm; Noisy shutters can be heard closing down nearby and the sparrows outside in the trees seem to have notched up their frenzied cacophony by a few counts, a common phenomena I have often observed among these birds during such times of the day, strange, where do they get all that energy from?
It’s a rare pleasure to be able to sit back and watch through the blinds a quintessentially lazy, old-Calcutta evening roll by. I enjoyed myself watching tiny light bulbs flicker from little shops smattered all around the old street through the blur created by the thick smoke emanating from the clay stoves. Groups of fruit vendors and sellers of small wares chatted as they packed up for the day, the thick smoke descending over Old P.O. Street, the soft chatter, the sound of a perfectly rhythmic, distant temple bell, the smell of freshly fried samosas nearby and the gradually disappearing light, all added to the peculiarly picturesque setup of the place and I sat absorbing it all, feeding that rarer than rare romantic side of mine.
As I wait for it to be 8.00 pm at which time I am to start for Jodhpur Park to attend a meeting with a senior Barrister at his residence and my boss (who by the way conveniently left for home at 2.30 pm), a realisation gripped me. I realised that after all this while I actually sat there killing time! The familiarity of the feeling reminded me once again of how far I had drifted away in these four months, the thought that only four months back I was a student, rich on time made things worse. I had taken for granted something that I was so generously bestowed with and now the tables had turned.
The days of rolling around on moist grass on a hilltop looking up at the clouds, of going for long evening walks down never ending roads, of jamming with the guys, beer drunk or for that matter just sitting by the window on a breezy, cloudy October afternoon looking out at the green hilltops and clouds, are gone and time has become an indulgence I can ill afford.
Its 7.00 pm now, soon after I am done typing this I shall sit back, rest my arms and legs a little, sip hot tea, maybe get a few samosas fom the shop right opposite, I shall enjoy every minute of killing this 1 hour.
(Writing during office hours, or after, has become a terrible habit with me but it can't be helped, the work is such that a little bit of penning around here and there is necessary to keep me from dozing off and it's anyways better getting caught writing your blog than snoozing in office, correct?)
