Idleness

I was not born idle, but idleness was born in me.  It crawls, creeps and peeps like a scorpion.

Lying down on my bed and staring at the ceiling, enveloped by the fathomless silence of the grieving summer night, hearing only the flower-soft footsteps of slumber, I have started chalking out the next day’s work.

Will get up early before sunrise. Take bath in the chilly water, have breakfast with the news paper in hand, may finish fifteen to twenty pages of the book which I started reading one month back and desired to finish two weeks ago! Henceforth, in any case, I won’t brook myself to linger on the pages; I will slide through the corridors of words and sentences charged with profound ideas, gripping tightly and surmounting my wandering thoughts.

Will force myself to cease hating my official work.  Pondering over my attitude, I couldn’t help wondering.  It’s crystal clear that service is the recourse to me to stand on my own in this extremely slippery world but still I abhor work.  But not…not from tomorrow onwards. 

After returning from office, will browse through Sulekha to meet my beloved friends and go through their imaginative minds, take bath in the chilly water to embrace freshness and stroll down to my local friends zone. But as my usual won’t, I won’t waste more time, will adieu to them at the earliest to return to my busy and worthy schedule.  After supper, I will catch hold of my beloved book and will float like a boat in the serene lake lying under the embrace of a taciturn moonlit night.  I will sit for long in this blissful heaven and then go to sleep to plunge into sweet, fragrant dreams.

I don’t know when the flower-soft footsteps metamorphosed into elephantine and when my thoughts crushed under it.

When I woke up, I could see the sun above the grey horizon.  Through the window panes the golden rays penetrated laughing at me.  I looked at the clock, it grinned at me with a wry smile.  I am already late. All my plans have crumbled.

Now even if I hurriedly make a move, I will miss my usual train.  If I go to my office, affirmatively, like a sword, “Warning” will fall on me since for the last four days I have been reaching late.  Oh! This is all due to my lengthy plans to avoid idleness and I have fallen pray to it.

What an irony!

I crawled again under the blanket, closed my eyes and opened my mind.

A spectrum of rays rushed in.  Indeed this is paradise! To hell with the office and my bloody plans. 

Oh god! Bless me to lie in the clasp of this heavenly bliss, forever, forever; oblivious of all worldly worries and bedlam!

Long live idleness!