One day

Home. The five-seven minutes I get in the morning, after the shower and just before breakfast appear to be the most precious in my twentyfour hours. The kid'll be up and playing with Dad. Archana is busy in the kitchen and I'm alone in the room, getting ready to leave, racing against the clock. These few moments I snatch from the routine are entirely mine. There's a clarity as well as anxiety. All the resolutions, dreams and goals come up to the forefront. I take up a few issues and think deep on them. Decide on a few things. Scribble a bit. If time permits, grab a book and read. Contemplate on an idea. Make a few notes. And then rush out.

What makes that small patch of time so productive, is beyond me. Sometimes I get a couple of hours at night to do anything, and it's just wasted in unproductive browsing or doodling. Saturdays bring with them more free time and only after I've spent them do I realize that they're gone and nothing much has been done. When time is scarce it's intense, focused and productive. In abundance, it dilutes and dissipates.

'It's the same with everything'.

'No, only with your time. Not with everything.'

Office. Servers go down and the network collapses. We sit idle for sometime. Most of the staff are on leave today, as if they're intutively aware of the impending network crash. The technicians are trying to fix the problem and until then we've practically no work. I open a pdf of Osho's earlier talks and read. Most of osho's ideas are fascinating but they don't stick, they don't go deep, say like those of Echart tolle. I close the document and idle out. Go to a nearby bakery and order a honey cake. Just behind the curtain, a young boy is busy preparing the buns and cakes. His clothes are shabby, hands are dirty and he's the happiest man, joking with his fellow workers. The cake's tasty.

Crowds. Everywhere. I'm one among them, going forward in this unending procession. Drops of an ocean, scattered and frittered away. Going home after a busy day, going back to rest, recuperate and come back fresh, only to get tired and return home. Or, in case of BPO staff, going to work for the whole night after sleeping through the day. Come together, gather at a traffic signal and again disperse. Individual lives. Personal dreams. All are different, in the details of their lives. Yet similar, in their fears, hopes, cunningness and nobility. A city bursting with 60 lakh souls. A nation of a billion. Six billion inhalations and exhalations, simultaneously happening around the earth. I'm one of them. One inhalation and exhalation is mine too. Insignificant. Yet precious.

My absence would make no significant impact on this grand drama, just as nobody's absence would. Yet, if I'm not here, the drama makes no sense, it has no bloody value. Because if I, the beholder isn't here, who gives it a damn anyway! Music is meaningless if I'm deaf. The world exists only in subjectivity. And that gives me my significance, my importance.