I had changed the desktop wall paper for the fourth time in just twenty minutes: had jumped from the national geographic to web shots to digital blasphemy to a brand new wall paper site in search of soulful wall papers.  My desktop looks beautiful, though!

I prolong over the last few sips of the tea…this must be my fifth cup in the one hour past….The system is on & the internet is on …my anti-virus icon whirls once again, assuring me of an agreeable safety from the monsters of the Netverse!  Mr. Firefox looks quite handsome on my desktop, burdened with an unbelievable amount of add-ons...blue sky, bluish green waters, bluer ice caps on the far-off mountain range, and a lone ranger in the middle of it all!  That must be me; wandering in those far away lands with mists of longing in my eyes, waiting for the Divine Intervention….I should really stop this wall paper research mission & embark on doing something more constructive, like concentrating on the project in hand!

I know very well as to why I was sitting in front of my system. Of all the things, it was not definitely for day dreaming in the wall paper world!  I close my eyes, trying to bring back the memories of the height of my stardom, when my fingers had bled trying to cope up with the outpour of the lines, paras, pages and chapters of my creations…

The Divine Intervention & the power of words!! How can you describe the Divine Intervention! How can anyone describe the Divine Intervention? The Divine Intervention is like commanding the breeze into becoming a whirling a tornado, creating the giant tsunami waves out of the calm waters, and crafting the Titanic out of a small fish boat…the power of words!

When you create a masterpiece, you don’t need to publish it, it gets published itself! You don’t need to advertise your book, it gets advertised itself! People stand in the queue in front of the bookstores all thro the night in order to buy your book. Media suddenly becomes your greatest & the best friend, all these because, you can write! The letters, the words and the language awaits your command so that you can create! You can create the land of your choice!  You decree people to cry …they cry. You direct people to make love …they make love…You want someone to be killed…of course, they get killed!  You can create talking animals, blessed human beings, lovely forests, the beautiful sceneries…and then you create Alice herself, standing amazed among them all! There is no deterrent for you..! You become the king, queen and emperor all rolled into one in those days!

I sigh deeply!  Today is most definitely not one of them!  Today? I am surprised at the audacity of my own thoughts!  What about yesterday, the day before, the days before that, the weeks, months & years before that? It is too long, too very long a period of time…I had really missed the bliss of being buried alive in the sand storm, being hit by the mountains and being swallowed alive by the Anaconda… and boy, oh boy, was I the happiest person alive on the Mother Earth at that time? Of course, it was a sheer bliss! You may never know and you could never guess!

Well, there were signs for the onset of such days! For once, you woke up feeling extraordinarily blessed, though you never know how and why?  You notice the different shades of the shadows, the different lights of the lights, clearly differentiate the different smells of the smells even at 5 in the morning…the smell of the fresh new leaf sprouting out of your drawing room plant, of the first cup of tea, of the dust on your car top, of the particles of love swirling within your home…you notice everything that is happening around you, every little thing… and then, you take a step beyond them all and become the true master of the words & the worlds! How can you ever describe such happenings? You just had to be there to understand the bits and pieces…you could never understand for that matter as to why the angels had chosen to walk around your home & murmur in your heart, of all the people in the world! You are just blessed, that is what you have become, blessed by the forces beyond anyone’s reasoning!

You walk with the stars…sleep on the clouds…honored all over the country and in the World…you see the outpour of the checks, but don’t really figure out the figures in them…you are astounded!

I know that! I had been there before!  I had touched the air, spoken to the birds, hugged the water, torn a piece out of the rainbows and shaken hands with God Himself!  It was truly a ‘once upon a time’ story...had happened in the days, months and in the years gone by! I am still a famous, but almost in a forgotten sort of a way!  There is no more magic left in me, though dutifully I sit in front of the system daily since morning till evening to write something, anything, but always square off turning out nothing!

May be I need a change!  May be, I need to do something different…like visiting one of these social networking sites and read the people’s comments there! Silly comments, stupid comments, nasty comments and absurd comments….May be, I should get the rss feeds added on in my Firefox and start reading the news & views…May be, I should read an e-book, a good Sherlock Holmian type…

My thoughts swing again: I should go for a coffee machine. It would be easy to get a cuppa that way, rather than making some…then again, I would become an absolute addict on that stuff for the rest of my life. To make a cup every time is a bit of a deterrent for my lazy bones at least now!

My Gmail Notifier bleeds blue over the envelope icon and notifies me of new mails: I just click on it & glance over the baseline of the mails…well; at least there is something worthwhile for me to do now. For the next few minutes, I get engrossed in the work in hand!  

I finish off with one set of mails and move on to another email provider and another set of mails and by the end of it all, my mid-morning churns out into a wholesome sunny afternoon…being a foodie and working from home must be a deadly combination of wonderful advantages (& of course, with definite disadvantages too). I browse around the kitchen and the fridge, scrap up a wise choice of a big bowl of salads, a chocolate bar, some juice and of course, my self promised cup of, rather a mug of coffee!

I cherish eating lunch, a prolonged lunch, enjoy biting the bits, rather than the hurried breakfast I always have, while completing my morning chores!  I switch on the T.V., vaguely watching some stupid scene from some stupid movie, though this is better than eating alone. At least I can watch somebody eating, sleeping and doing all mundane things, like you and me do, and then become so engrossed in it! May be, people are born voyeurs! May be, movies have got something amazingly extraordinary in them, like the collection of good looking people & places!

When lunch is over, I delay further over the cleaning process, switching off the TV, moving restlessly from one room to another till I finally & reluctantly entered into my favorite domain of the home.

My system is still connected to the net, bringing in the cookies, spy ware, malware and God knows what all the other wares, from the net! The poor
He-Man of my system had to fight with all these skeletal(s) all alone! I know I have work to do. I know I shall have to start now, at least now! I open the page in which I was working! Nothing is happening! I just sit there, looking at the page, the previous page, and the other previous pages! Still nothing!

I had suddenly remembered that I haven’t done the backup of my system in the past two weeks. Ohh oh! I initialize on the process, activate my on-line storage system and it took me more than an hour to satisfy my motherly back up instincts. Finally, the time has come for me to start working on my project once again!

No more valid excuses!

Had tea? Many times! Had lunch? Oh, yeah!
Done the backup, yes, of course!
Attended to the mails, quite sure!
Home looks nice? Of course, what do you think?
Shopping over? Yesterday itself!
Dinner ready? Not yet time!

I had answered all my diverting questions with a commendable simplicity to myself and now, I definitely am left with nothing better than reverting back to the project in hand!

No more valid excuses!

Suddenly I feel a bit tired, not much, just a wee bit tired! Sitting without productivity in front of the system, day dreaming all day long at home…of course, it is really tiring!  May be, I could use some napping, nothing serious, nothing spectacular…just cat-napping! … I willingly make sense out of this beautiful thought & give into the temptation of lying down and stretching up my feet!

My goodness! I had completely forgotten to switch on the mobile: that explains why I have not received even a single call since morning! I had switched it off at mid-night yesterday, when a wrong number had called…

Within minutes of switching it on, I started getting missed call messages and calls! It takes two women with no time sense, blessed with the patience of the amused God, to earmark their ‘catching up with the past over telephone’ ceremony!  I had called back all my girl friends and had received calls from the others. When I had wrapped up the session(s), it was time again for tea.  Of course, a person deserves a cup of an evening tea!

After tea, I had finally decided to stretch out for a cat nap! Nothing spectacular, like reclining in the luxury suite of one of the most famous hotels in the world!  Just me, my two winks and my decades’ old, but comfortable bed!

I woke up feeling completely refreshed, sniffing honey in the air…in the past few hours of my being unconsciousness, the World had changed! I heard air moving thro the gap between the door and the frame of my door…I heard the air hissing out seconds before the water flowing thro the tap…I heard the air moving in between the printer and its cover...I heard the air being distributed all over the room by the A/C ducts!  I heard angels dancing around my home…I knew!

I could perceive shadows within shadows and lights within lights! I could catch a glimpse of the patterns within the pattern of the world around me. I knew…the angels have come calling me once again!

You may never know when the angels will mesmerize you, making you to write! You may never know when a portion of your sleeping brain suddenly wakes up wanting to talk thro’ your fingers…you may never know when you will see the different shades of the shadows and the different lights of the lights! For me, that day is today! Today is one of those rare days!  Today is my day! Yesterday Once More!
 
I feel like walking, crying, sleeping, hugging, praying, eating and feeling like going right back to the sleep! I now know that I will complete the pages, finish off the chapters and culminate the project soon!

I had been there before!  I had touched the air, spoken to the birds, hugged the water, torn a piece out of the rainbows and shaken hands with God Himself! 

I know! Today is the day and to day is my day!

By Lalitha.V.Raman
New Delhi, India