Chapter 16- Early Morning Blues!!!!

Over the years I tried many methods, read many books, swallowed all advices.Tuned, pushed, coaxed myself…Avoided Snoozing button….asked mom to spring cold water...slept early..Kept 5 alarms under various corners of my body……..

So with resolute perseverance, I put everything at stake, made determined efforts, consulted the best doctors in town, spent huge amounts of money on the best and most sophisticated alarms possible, tried all sorts of things, exoteric and esoteric places to sleep, left no stone unturned, struggled and struggled, with dogged persistence, at long last..........until that day!!!!The day when I started understanding the fact that a glimpse of her sight was enough to fill my soul...... enough to change my routine..Enough to knock me off my feet…..

Our houses were strategically positioned in the middle of a long road which gave view of the entire road from both ends. Little flower church was positioned in the beginning of the road…from that side her vehicle always took the turn towards my house. I never know or tried knowing the reason of building the house in this strategic corner.. Until that day when I realized watching a girl rushing to her school with the school uniform was the most soulful activity to do…..

I realized this is the light of my life, my raison d’etre, and the very reason for living and certainly the source of all my present happiness…….

We kept this secret well under cover and I started experiencing a refreshing sense of solitude. I experienced the tremendous advantages of obscurity as I lose myself in the huge enveloping deluge of love. That’s freedom…That’s love - the power of anonymity.

How we ended up there is a different story and can be explained only if we browse through even older page of my diary…this is all about how I got up early during my college days…hence lets come back to the point ..…

We realized that without seeing each other it is going to be impossible to start a day, and her school and tuition commitments starts so early in the morning which means it is going to be even more difficult for me.
However that is life you have to make choices. Impressively without much help from alarms, and other weird methods I started getting up at 5:30, which was a shock to everyone in the family.

My mom’s belief on her favorite deity saw a sudden increase seeing the changes in me also she started believing that it’s his blessing that refined my thoughts. She also believed that all the celestial bodies finally started noticing her son who was ignored by each one of them for quite a long time. But the fact that it is not the celestial bodies sitting above us it is just a girl who is staying next door started noticing her son has never stroked her .She keep telling my father that our son has finally understood the value of getting up early and studying, because I use to roam around in the balcony with a piece of economics book. But its only me who know the real purpose behind that….She made it point to get me up even if I forget (which never happened), helped with a nice tea and got busy with her work I continued my heroics in the balcony just for a glimpse of that girl who will traveling in her school uniform behind her father in that old kinetic Honda.

Instinctively… Intuitively…. Impulsively. Spontaneously… I developed this wonderful skill to identify the scooter with the very minute sound, identify the scooter with the sudden change in the wind …identify even in the sea of thousand two wheelers….
Generally my study ends the moment scooter vanishes from sight ...this entire heroics happened 8-10 years back but it is still so fresh in my mind that it just plays in ultra slow motion whenever I think about it with picture like perfection.
The so call activity always lasted below 10 second , with her scooter taking a deviation from the starting point of the road and approaches closely towards my house and went past me in a brisk of a second. But for me the purpose of life was revolving around this 10 seconds...she just gazed at me and had a curving cute smile on her face, and I just responded with a stupid blunt look.
Those were the day which started like a roller coaster and exploded to maximum speed in a split of 5 sec.
I was feeling complete....Days passed by. I even joined an early morning batch in my college and convinced Sangeeth (My best friend) to join along with me citing all the reasons and benefit of getting up early, the importance of discipline in life..studying hard… getting a good seat in a B school ....what not!!!….Poor fellow he believed me at every junction of my life and stayed with me…..In fact and in reality he eventually build up the habit of getting up early by just dreaming the never ending benefits he is going to reap in the coming days….

By now I had moved in to an Irretrievable mode of love……

Then came the ‘D’ day when I was expecting a response from her..Even though both of us knew that an answer was just a matter of time, I was keen to know how she will pass her response in a matter of 10 seconds...Will she scream while pillion riding the scooter? Will she ask her father to stop the scooter and slowly come close to me and tell me that I am the one she had been waiting for..all these years..? Will she just turn her head away from me to say that I am sorry? These line of thoughts kept ringing in my head.
I waited outside my house just like any other day...and prayed that Sangeeth’s car which generally drops us to the college should not come before her scooter (Because after getting exited about the wonderful benefits of getting up early he at times complelled his father so much that their vehicle he overtook her vehicle and eventually spoiled my routine more than a couple of times-well!!!) that is what happen when your own idea back fires!!!….

Anyway I waited that day with a bouncing heart and after what it seemed like million seconds... I could see her vehicle coming from the corner of the road, she was wearing the same school uniform and I was holding the same economics book, When she neared my gate, she turned and threw an éclair towards me.It went and hit my gate I still wonder from where she got the mettle to do that when her father was sitting just in front of her, riding that scooter.
I was feeling out of the world as I got what I deserved, With a lot of excitement and at the peak of ecstacy, I wanted to open that immediately But, bad luck appeared in the form of Sangeeth's car! As i was about to open that eclairs cover, i could hear Sangeeth's car horn which stopped me from opening that little piece...I don’t know how I managed the next 5 hour in the classroom without exploring what is there inside that éclair ...After that eternal wait, finally i rushed to the top of my house deep inside underneath the apocryphal place which I had created for my solitude I opened that tiny éclair nonchalantly yet carefully just to realize that she thinks,share and reciprocate the same feeling…in the same way ….

My heart just exploded even though I knew the answer years before this incident. The year in the calendar kept rolling... I continued to gaze at her and she responded with the same smile on her face until that day when I had to go for my higher studies to Hyderabad.
Both our families were close and citing that as a reason on many occasions we had gone together to see off friends, relatives at the railway station….and in the midst of all chaos at railway station we found a tiny little corner deep inside our heart for eternal solitude… We never visited parks…never went to watch any movie...never got the opportunity to share a coffee in a coffee shop…we never met alone, we were always surrounded by mass…yet we found place for sharing our love in middle of different human emotions and faces.

But on the day when we met at the station to see me off, we didn’t speak and it was impossible to talk when we were surrounded by so many people. I just looked at her eyes... still remember those moments when those eyes were telling me that she will wait….she didn't want me to utter a single word... she heard what my heart said..Even thousand words could not have conveyed better at that particular moment…


We were in an era before Ambani launched 500 rs mobile phone. Hence I was sure that it will be impossible to talk till i come back …train slowly moved...I kept looking at her till she vanished from my sight.

7 Years later…….

I still feel getting up early in the morning is a herculean task!!! But my mom was shouting that day outside my room asking me to get up and yelling that its my WEDDING DAY!!!!.

Gosh I opened my eyes..Wow I am going to get married....My mom told me that the bride & the family will leave in few minutes to the Mandap!!! She kept yelling at me as i start "Idiot! you are still sleeping". She also taunted her deity saying that he has never corrected me on this habit.
I checked the alarm clock it is quite late it is around 7 AM...just then I remembered - she had told me that they will leave by 7.15 to mandap!…That means I still have 15 mins ....hey in that case I can see her…..I got hold of my T- shirt and went outside to the same old balcony..I waited for her much like years back …...Only difference was that i was not carrying the economics book in my hand (for the sake of it) and I don’t have to fear that Sangeeth will overtake her vehicle this time……..
I tried to re polish my skills  to identify her vehicle. I could still figure out their car horn.i saw their car turning at the far end of the road just behind the Little flower church.As it approached my gate i saw her through the car window. She was looking at me with the same gentle smile.only difference she is in her bridal wear instead of that school uniform... But I would have loved to see her with that old school uniform and the water bottle instead of the gold ornaments and Kanjeepuram Saree even on the day of wedding! (:-)( I m serious!) I wished she would throw another éclair which is a bundle of love for me when the car approached..But she stayed true to her age and just smiled at me.... …


I heard mother yelling again and again to get ready.......I knew that in a matter of next few hours my story is going to end(.oops begins...)as I will be marrying my childhood friend after long 12 year long relationship……….which started without us realizing it…..which grew deep inside us and which blossomed under the blessings of a lot of people.

I have never pushed myself to get up early after that.....i have never figured out the importance of getting up early...in fact I am never successful with snooze buttons, alarm clock…sprinkling water..Sleeping early etc……
But years back on every cold morning without any of these techniques and even without a sweater I used to wait just with an economic book in the hand to have a glimpse of a girl wearing a school uniform.........:) ……
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Enduring habits I hate.... Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits-Frederick Nietsche