Today, I realized something. I am scared of my maid.
Let’s call her V.

She comes around twice a week to jolt me out of my let-it-be existence and sends me scurrying on the days previous to her arrival.

So, from sometime yesterday morning I am thinking that I should go buy vegetables. The crisper in the fridge is empty. I will also have to buy atta. Yesterday morning I think I will sneak out of work in the evening and do a bit of buying at the local market – well, it’s a stretch of pavement really, where the vendors sit one after the other. But yesterday evening, I forget. Or rather, I think I will do it this morning.

This morning I wake up at 11.45. I am thinking of going to the market. Then a lunch plan happens in a jiffy and I am off. So, the vegetable-buying gets pushed to the evening, again. Evening comes. I am working. Then, at 8, I see the clock on the computer. Panic.

V will walk in tomorrow at 9. I will open the door feeling like a kid who has been oversleeping. She will look at me with that these-people-today look.

(Last week she had pointed to a two-month-old pile in a corner and said, “Yeh khazana kab hatayenge?” I had withered. Then, the day before she was supposed to come again, I skipped coffee with a friend to clean up the corner.)

Tomorrow, V will open the fridge. Sigh. Turn to me, wanting to say, “Bhaji kyun nahin laya?”, but will turn away again, knowing it’s pointless. Then she will jiggle the container for atta and say…

Shit. I forgot about the atta.

I am running out of the office with a plastic bag in hand, stuffing money into my pocket, making some excuse to my colleagues.

Half an hour later, I return, panting, sweating, but relieved.

The issue of the atta remains though. Am hoping the Shop Downstairs will come to my rescue tomorrow morning.

So, I was gearing up to change one part of my life when some other part turned on its head when I was not quite watching.
That happens sometimes, I guess: That you are preparing – girding – for a change that you see coming or are actively working towards and then, right behind you, the fundamentals of some other bit of your world shifts.
For instance, I, for the first time in my working life, now find myself with evenings. I had always known they existed outside my office walls, in the lives of other people. But never in mine. Quite like a car, perhaps. Or a younger sibling.
It’s not that I missed them. But now that I have suddenly been handed over half-a-dozen of them every week, I am quite at a loss about what to do with them.
I have also reaffirmed my belief that mornings can be languid. The rest of the day has enough shit in it, so must we begin the day with our hearts thumping and the arteries swelling up?
(On a related note, I think early mornings are highly overrated. Waking up early does have its advantages, but its virtues have been glorified for no justifiable reason.)

But it’s good, this jolting of the bolts. Reminds me they are not ready to get rusty, just yet.