Tuesday, August 04, 2009
By mid afternoon the lunch is simmering and soughing on the cooking range. Ravioli mishmash with the salvaged and reconditioned salmon chunks from a few months back. The house is clean, floors vacuumed and bathroom scrubbed. The kitchen sink remains to be buffed and you realize that you are out of Scotch-Brite to do that.
After a few sessions at the local supermarket, one is the denizen of the unwritten shopping list, thriving on the by now edacious instinct, swooping and grabbing from racks that follow a mathematical pattern which is very little disturbed or different anywhere on the planet. You cannot help wondering if you will bump into the hottie from Accounts this time too. A mischievous fantasy germinates in the limbic folds of the mind, which you rudely brush away.
The last load of laundry is in the drier. Folding and ironing will follow.
You leave for the physiotherapist after that. The heat hits you like a blast from a furnace as you mentally chart the shortest course from the parking lot to the chrome and stone building. Crisp, drying leaves scurry across the pavement, a lucubration reminiscent of Mehendi Hassan’s, “ab kay hum bicchdey toh shaayad kabhi khabon main miley / jis tarah sookhey huye phool kitabon main miley”.
A young Filipina, generously doused with some deodorizer, which you quickly label as cheap and then admonish yourself for that unfair association, steps out of the entrance as the automatic glass doors inveigh against each other to open noisily.
In the anteroom to the clinic there is the restful emptiness of a weekend afternoon. This is the only entertainment you allow yourself now and you are eager to conform to this routine.
“You have been away on vacation”, she says as you strip to the waist and re-adjust the pillow to the side more convenient to be prone. After a dozen and a half sessions, there is a familiar tenderness to her touch, almost as if she knows the contours of your affliction. A stranger, one with you in your pain, a professional and a thorough one at that.
“What would you rather prefer today, Sir, the aqua-massage or the traction?” On the last two sessions sleep had wafted over in delicious pulses on the latter and had induced some mirth on this person and her other male patient.
“The traction”, you respond over your shoulder with just that hint of a twinkle in your eyes. “Because then I can sleep better”.
She giggles.
But then she does not know why sleep has been evading one. How could she?
After a few sessions at the local supermarket, one is the denizen of the unwritten shopping list, thriving on the by now edacious instinct, swooping and grabbing from racks that follow a mathematical pattern which is very little disturbed or different anywhere on the planet. You cannot help wondering if you will bump into the hottie from Accounts this time too. A mischievous fantasy germinates in the limbic folds of the mind, which you rudely brush away.
The last load of laundry is in the drier. Folding and ironing will follow.
You leave for the physiotherapist after that. The heat hits you like a blast from a furnace as you mentally chart the shortest course from the parking lot to the chrome and stone building. Crisp, drying leaves scurry across the pavement, a lucubration reminiscent of Mehendi Hassan’s, “ab kay hum bicchdey toh shaayad kabhi khabon main miley / jis tarah sookhey huye phool kitabon main miley”.
A young Filipina, generously doused with some deodorizer, which you quickly label as cheap and then admonish yourself for that unfair association, steps out of the entrance as the automatic glass doors inveigh against each other to open noisily.
In the anteroom to the clinic there is the restful emptiness of a weekend afternoon. This is the only entertainment you allow yourself now and you are eager to conform to this routine.
“You have been away on vacation”, she says as you strip to the waist and re-adjust the pillow to the side more convenient to be prone. After a dozen and a half sessions, there is a familiar tenderness to her touch, almost as if she knows the contours of your affliction. A stranger, one with you in your pain, a professional and a thorough one at that.
“What would you rather prefer today, Sir, the aqua-massage or the traction?” On the last two sessions sleep had wafted over in delicious pulses on the latter and had induced some mirth on this person and her other male patient.
“The traction”, you respond over your shoulder with just that hint of a twinkle in your eyes. “Because then I can sleep better”.
She giggles.
But then she does not know why sleep has been evading one. How could she?
Labels: Saturdays ~ living alone
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You paint such a vivid picture with words. You must write a novel. That is, if you have not done so already.
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