Lending an ear to daybreak

Mornings and I have had a lasting love affair. Ever since I can remember, I have been a morning person, usually up by 5. And I mean literally up on my feet. Today was no exception. Only I lay awake earlier than usual, not caring to leave the bed or look at my bedside clock. I decided to give the slippers a slip this time. There was an invisible audience clapping their hands at my decision to stay put in bed as I fought a tremendous urge to switch on the lamp and turn to the unfinished book by my side.

I sleep with my windows slightly ajar in winter. Yes, I have strange taste in ventilation. Summers are when I am cooped up within, listening to the soiree of the air-conditioners blowing away to an artificial assurance of chill. Winters are different. While I keep the house sealed off from evening visits of thirsty mosquitoes, I throw my shutters open at bedtime. So that I don’t miss out on the natural cool, the drift of a wintry mist invading my rest. And by then the six-legged vampires have given up trying to break into human realm. There is another reason though. I like the winter morning sounds.

I like imagining a tiny woman in a white robe, with silver hair and silver stilettos running on my shutter ledge, picking up a sweet rhythm as she passes. And sometimes fancy her slipping indoors as I pretend to lie asleep. No Jack Frost for me. O boy, am I messed up? What I mean to say is that I like the resonance and noises that travel through the silent foggy mist during winter. No silly ambient acoustics from droning fans or air-coolers shutting away the natural clamor – of life. Life abuzz at the end of a dark restful night. And I think the dawn is a whole new world altogether. My kind of world, so to speak. With silence in enough measures to distill the sounds you choose to hear.

I crane my neck to trace the source of light that falls straight on my pillow. I discover faint jangle of utensils coming from my neighbor’s kitchen window upstairs. With that the accompanying tinkle of glass bangles. I imagine wet hands bedazzled with red, blue and green caressing stainless steel pots and pans with lather. Someone is up ahead of me, it seems. I close my eyes. I try to focus on the sounds that come afloat from afar. Bollywood numbers wafting from a late night function at a neighborhood cultural club, which obviously has spilled over into the wee hours. The morning call to prayer in the local mosque – there is a strange peace to the bid, though I can never make out what they say. As if they summon believers to the house of god, to share the morning light together – the break of a new day. The sound of cooing pigeons flapping their wings, haunting the cornice of our identical houses, sitting aligned on the overhead tank after their ritual bustle is over. They chatter away as they wait for glass shutters to open and unknown hands litter window sills with their daily ration of cereals.

I sink my head back into the pillow, roll over and look at the sky. It isn’t yet blue but an inky grey. No sign of cloud too, or maybe there is, the fog doesn’t let me see through. I hear the sound of me yawning. Listen to the steady breathing of my son sleeping next to me. I pull the duvet closer, tighter around us. A tap leaking in a washroom. Someone humming a love-song. There is a couple who live next-block, a flight of stairs below. I can see a square of their bed if I push aside my bedroom curtain and pry, which I assure you, I never do. There are exceptions, of course. Like when I want to see their toddler play with his teddy on the bed, his feet up in the air. When I want to listen to the young parents’ baby-talk, urging the little mite to walk on the bed.

- “We will catch your fall, baby, nothing to fear, sweetheart. Come try, walk right into my arms.”

I can listen to their entire morning routine from my bed. Of the child waking the parents up, the mother warming up water to make the formula, the father brushing teeth, talking illegibly through dental froth, flushing his pee down the toilet, and the whole family stirring back to business. I time-travel back to when I was a new mother and although, we had little money, we had time enough for everyone in the family. We had similar cheerful mornings to wake up to. I smile at the memory – not too long ago in years, but somehow it seems like ages now.

Then there is my next-door kaku, whose snores permeate the thick walls of my en suite toilet. The snores have a surge and a drop – a peculiar resemblance to the rise and fall of tides. And come with an assertion that despite his age and ailments, he continues to defy the end. I offer a silent prayer in thankfulness. The old graying pair are substitute parents to me; oftentimes, dropping in at odd hours to complain about aching joints and rising prices. Shortly afterwards, as the dawn breaks into day, there begins the dull upward-downward grind of the elevator. The domestic helps reporting to duty. The security guard turning off lights on corridors. The milkman arriving with his cart. Newspaper delivery boy pushing the fresh print-roll through each collapsible iron gate. The sun demanding that I face the day with my characteristic nonchalance and wait for another daybreak to soak in the daily echoes of living.

Morning, here I come!

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Picture courtesy: The Internet