May 24, 2011

With a morning heart





You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
~ Billy Wilder.

 I have always wondered about what makes a good morning.

Is it the bed you slept on? Is it the last thought you had the previous night, which decides whether its going to be one of those peach coloured mornings, when you get up with your body juiced up eager and hungry for another day.

Is it about the city you get up in? Whether you hear the birds or cacophony of morning traffic, that makes or breaks a morning?

Is it about the bed you slept on? Whether it was just right for you back, butt and neck? Whether it smelled familiar and felt good?

Is it about the person you slept with? Wrapped around each other like a spider’s net, moistened with kisses and tender conversations, which made your eyes heavy and pushed you into a slumber

Is it about what you dreamt? Whether a distant loved one came walking into your dream, held your hand and took you around a rainbow.

Most of my good friends have in common with me this preference for getting up late. We dont stress ourselves with what the clock says. We check inside if its morning ding dong or not yet! It doesnt necessarily match with 6am, 7 am, 8am or 9am. A lot of oldies I love think its some kind of a plague that we younger generation suffer from(this not getting up in the morning to the call of duty).  I remember my war with my dad started on the subject of getting up in the morning. He likes to make his presence/ authority felt in those magical hours of the morning. Its when I am crooning in my sweetest hours of slumber and tangiest dreams; that he wants me to be up and about and and cooking breakfast!

Yes maybe it is about the breakfast I never cook which irks him! I being the female of the species must confirm to my duties by reporting in the mornings to the authority of parenthood. And Even though us girls have been raised like  boys, having been sent to school and being told to have 'careers' I see this inherent discomfort in the males in my family looking at women sleeping till late. What a blasphemy to see the girls streching languorously on the bed dreaming of who knows what! Surely they must never be found sleeping in the mornings.' They ought to up praying and cooking for it to be a good morning for them!'

So much for the Talibani hopes of my dad(Although I suspect if I had been a boy I would have suffered the same fate as well). Offc ourse I never get up early and feel terrible about it too! Years and years of not having anything motivating enough(I neithe pray nor make breakfast for my family) makes me sleep till late and avoid getting up if at all I can avoid it.

Gradually I realise off late all my good mornings have come from sleeping at unfamiliar places away from the routine of a dragging schedule and people who play like old records, the same tunes every day. I hate them. They make me not want to get up in the morning.

Slowly the itch of wanting to see new colors in that same old sun excite me more and more as I loose years. To think that there can be a different angle and diffrent windows, from which I see the sun everymorning brings on a wonder which brightens me up. When eagerness wells up to gape at the patterns that clouds make is the sky I am greatful.What joy to simply wake up on mornings when the sun doesnt bark out from an alarm clock.

Its only in the rawness of mornings, smelling my own stale breath, that I am at this emotional vantage to turn upside down, all the things I don’t like face up! In the day everything is too much of what It is already, to do anything about it. Its when in the morning I come down from my dreamland and touch the ground, that  I dont like to  break my sleep.
But I cant do it on all mornings. Only some mornings does my morning heart triumph over the wicked indifferent forces of this world.

I think what’s so special about mornings is that they are the only time of the day when you have the chance to choose between a dream or rationality. The choices are (a) take cognisance of the hard unyielding ground that you stand on and throw the dream in a dustbin.(b) feel the dream in the little of your palm and leap with it. 
Whether you sink or fly is the buisness of the other part of the day. But the morning dharma surely is simple.

Leap starting the engine of the heart with every round of the sun. No matter how illogical, no many how stupid the dream is. You kill the morning if you kill the dream in your heart. My best mornings have been with completely insane dreams. Standing on a shitmoutian and thinking of Himalayas. Driving on the Ghaziabad highway thinking of streets of Paris. Who knows whether actual Himalayas and streets of paris when they come will bring any real happiness or not!

So I love my mornings with morning hearts. Reality/Duty/Uprightness/Morality/Foresight can you please excuse me in this lifetime? No place for you in my morning with my morning heart.