I should have been relaxed. It was a Saturday morning after all. But I had a lot of errands to run and couldn't have afforded a delay anywhere. Obviously, the very first delay occurred at the bank when the cashier told me that she would not be able to process my withdraw request for at least 15 minutes owing to some technical glitch. Now you might wonder why I wanted to visit the bricks-and-mortar avatar of the bank instead of heading for the nearest ATM. Well, ATMs don't churn out the currency notes in the exact denominations that I want, at least not all of them.
I took a deep cleansing breath and prayed to the God Almighty that the glitch is sorted soon. But I couldn't wait as that would have delayed my appointment for the haircut. Maybe if my stylist has arrived early at the salon I would be done with it earlier than planned - I knew this was wishful thinking but I willed every ounce of mental power I had to make it come true. Turns out that wasn't enough. It became pretty clear quickly that I would have to cool my heels (and my head!) for a better part of 15 minutes.
Frustrated, I made a couple of phone calls, arranged for a set of documents to be picked up from my place, sent a few pending texts, put in place a few reminders. But when I looked at the mobile screen again (I don't even remember the last time I used a watch!), only 5 minutes had flown by. What? That's impossible! Am I in some kind of slow time zone here? Is the earth's crust different at this place than the outside world? Or does time pass by in a slow motion when you simply don't have anything to do but wait? I normally carry some reading material with him to guard against precisely this situation but I had been pretty confident that my carefully laid-out plan will function like clockwork. And so there was nothing to read, except a few grooming magazines in a rack beside me. I picked up one reluctantly and realized in a minute that reading it would be even more wasteful use of my time because I wasn't interested in what shade of lipstick Kareena wears or what kind of mascara she uses.
Use of my time! I suddenly stopped short at these words as I realized that I was stressing myself out trying to use every minute available. Rather I was trying to squeeze out every minute dry. While it is good to be efficient it is also necessary to what they call 'smell the roses'. And that's what precisely I had forgotten all about. Why couldn't I sit and do nothing even for 5 minutes? It wasn't that I was going to die that day. And even if I was, whatever tasks I was hurrying to complete wouldn't be that terribly important anyways.
Another deep cleansing breath! I put my phone in the purse, relaxed my posture and started looking out the glass door - at the cars zooming past, at the people hurrying to jobs or returning from their morning walks. I observed the attendant sweep the floor, dust the chairs, re-arrange the magazines. In fact, I was so absorbed in doing all this that I hardly noticed when my stylist called out to me.
As I got up I wondered if I will ever get a chance to do this again. No, the question was will I remember to this again even if I get such a chance.
I took a deep cleansing breath and prayed to the God Almighty that the glitch is sorted soon. But I couldn't wait as that would have delayed my appointment for the haircut. Maybe if my stylist has arrived early at the salon I would be done with it earlier than planned - I knew this was wishful thinking but I willed every ounce of mental power I had to make it come true. Turns out that wasn't enough. It became pretty clear quickly that I would have to cool my heels (and my head!) for a better part of 15 minutes.
Frustrated, I made a couple of phone calls, arranged for a set of documents to be picked up from my place, sent a few pending texts, put in place a few reminders. But when I looked at the mobile screen again (I don't even remember the last time I used a watch!), only 5 minutes had flown by. What? That's impossible! Am I in some kind of slow time zone here? Is the earth's crust different at this place than the outside world? Or does time pass by in a slow motion when you simply don't have anything to do but wait? I normally carry some reading material with him to guard against precisely this situation but I had been pretty confident that my carefully laid-out plan will function like clockwork. And so there was nothing to read, except a few grooming magazines in a rack beside me. I picked up one reluctantly and realized in a minute that reading it would be even more wasteful use of my time because I wasn't interested in what shade of lipstick Kareena wears or what kind of mascara she uses.
Use of my time! I suddenly stopped short at these words as I realized that I was stressing myself out trying to use every minute available. Rather I was trying to squeeze out every minute dry. While it is good to be efficient it is also necessary to what they call 'smell the roses'. And that's what precisely I had forgotten all about. Why couldn't I sit and do nothing even for 5 minutes? It wasn't that I was going to die that day. And even if I was, whatever tasks I was hurrying to complete wouldn't be that terribly important anyways.
Another deep cleansing breath! I put my phone in the purse, relaxed my posture and started looking out the glass door - at the cars zooming past, at the people hurrying to jobs or returning from their morning walks. I observed the attendant sweep the floor, dust the chairs, re-arrange the magazines. In fact, I was so absorbed in doing all this that I hardly noticed when my stylist called out to me.
As I got up I wondered if I will ever get a chance to do this again. No, the question was will I remember to this again even if I get such a chance.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment