The view through the windshield

Didn’t sleep too well last night. I was up at dawn, persistently pestered by the buzz of mosquitoes eager to bite and the birds were singing so loudly that there was no possibility of returning to sleep. I know, I know, I will not elicit any sympathy from anyone. 5am is probably something the world deals with, but bear in mind, I am a creative thinker (doesn’t matter if my office has limited my thinking prowess and re-christened me ‘an Editor’), who is NOT used to such times. Like Bart Simpson said, “there’s another 4:30?”.

In any case I had to leave for Jaipur so I left, albeit grumpily. The urban streets at any other hour are jam-packed with cars, trucks, auto, motorbikes and other such grey gas emitting vehicles careering into one another and blasting their horns. I considered myself lucky, the dirt tracks outside my window were so serene. Only the occasional moped engine or call of morning greeting punctuated the tuneful tweeting (yes! for a change) of 93.5 FM Radio. The calm of the city was engrossing, at times, I felt that I did not know the place at all. I was so occupied in enjoying and absorbing the sights of Delhi’s morning life that I did not even bother to change my position throughout the 5 hour 17 minute journey. The morning quietude just got me thinking. For that precise moment, I could feel life. Yes, life seemed like magic to me. Life, which was passing me at the speed of 60km/hr, seemed so complicated, yet so interwoven and interdependent: come to think of it, the rain falls and the moisture evaporates and rises, where it forms clouds and falls again as rain, over and over and over. The moon is the exact distance it needs to be from earth to block out the sun during a full solar eclipse. The sun is the exact distance from earth it needs to be to heat the planet enough to sustain life, neither too hot nor too cold. I shall stop here, for my musing might come across as mindless ranting of a teenager who has taken the first class of elementary science.

But I wish I were a teenager, I feel quite mature now. I feel like a middle-aged person with middle aged thoughts. Maybe it sounds confusing here, but it is that time of my life when the only thing I want is happiness that is far beyond the materialistic pleasures. It’s that time of my life when I realize that even if I’m alone in a crowd, I can still have a great time by having a conversation with my shadow. It’s probably that time of my life when I still hang on to my 'knight and princess story' knowing fully that real world is more complicated than that... it’s that time of my life when to know more about myself I take a cosmo Quiz!! oh yes! I took their Which Goddess Would You Be? quiz, a fun little exercise with fab anime illustrations. Turns out I am "The Goddess of Wisdom" (no, not the godess of procrastination!). "Intelligent and always aware of what is going on...You usually prefer to be alone with a good book than with a large crowd, which means some people believe you are cold. However, this is the opposite, because you are actually a very warm person." Good News.

To conclude, yes, today was a major learning experience for me; just another in a long, diverging series. Today reminded me of exactly how much I’ve changed in the past few years. Over the course of this car ride, I rode through my past on wings of hindsight, marveling at the magic of life.