All Things Considered

Jerome K Jerome and I have an amazing connection.  It is a pity that two people who connect so well were born in two different continents, a century apart.  And that we never even got a chance to meet and say hello.  Fate, one calls it ?

 You know what the thing is with this Slow-down-We-are-moving-fast-Letz-make-the-moment-last anthem ? It is cloying. Too much evangelism which even before one realizes turns into a philosophical musing - to the point of defence.  You could say my peanut brain has a slight problem comprehending all that profound stuff. And then comes along JKJ, talking about idleness and chaos the way he does - without any of the philosphical intellect,  just as a natural state of being. Not as a virtue that humour writers have made it to be, as a matter of factness about the whole thing.  Chaos is not glorified - only a few minute observations are made and reflected upon. 

He writes about travelling in a group & packing: And I tell myself - Ah, familiar. Talks of getting a household chore done - He is so right, I’ve been there.  Then derision on weather forecast - I know it too! (I have a remarkable story here, most singular one. But in the context of JKJ, it seems quite beside the point..)

And then, just when I had this entire thought process on how no one *I* know wakes up in the morning smiling, and how there is a not a single soul in this whole wide world who would like to give up sleep to meet a cold December morning in Bangalore - except those dudes who have these weird notions about early mornings being inspring and all that strange stuff-,  JKJ writes of waking up woes and comes *this* close (Brings index finger and thumb close together) to my opinions on that hardship.  aaaawww, maaaan! What, you read my mind even before it even existed ??

It is the same when you go to the sea-side. I always determine - when thinking over the matter in London - that I’ll get up early every morning, and go and have a dip before breakfast, and I religiously pack up a pair of drawers and a bath towel. I always get red bathing drawers. I rather fancy myself in red drawers. They suit my complexion so. But when I get to the sea I don’t feel somehow that I want that early morning bathe nearly so much as I did when I was in town.

On the contrary, I feel more that I want to stop in bed till the last moment, and then come down and have my breakfast. Once or twice virtue has triumphed, and I have got out at six and half-dressed myself, and have taken my drawers and towel, and stumbled dismally off. But I haven’t enjoyed it. They seem to keep a specially cutting east wind, waiting for me, when I go to bathe in the early morning; and they pick out all the three-cornered stones, and put them on the top, and they sharpen up the rocks and cover the points over with a bit of sand so that I can’t see them, and they take the sea and put it two miles out, so that I have to huddle myself up in my arms and hop, shivering, through six inches of water. And when I do get to the sea, it is rough and quite insulting.

One huge wave catches me up and chucks me in a sitting posture, as hard as ever it can, down on to a rock which has been put there for me. And, before I’ve said “Oh! Ugh!” and found out what has gone, the wave comes back and carries me out to mid-ocean. I begin to strike out frantically for the shore, and wonder if I shall ever see home and friends again, and wish I’d been kinder to my little sister when a boy (when I was a boy, I mean). Just when I have given up all hope, a wave retires and leaves me sprawling like a star-fish on the sand, and I get up and look back and find that I’ve been swimming for my life in two feet of water. I hop back and dress, and crawl home, where I have to pretend I liked it.

And despite the self-inflicting torture that this waking-up ordeal has turned into, I try to press on with ideas conceived on my warm bed at night - morning walk, morning photography, silent morning coffee.. Brain-dead, am I ?