Living in the city

Nope, I am not referring to Bangalore, though since I have mentioned it now, I might as well touch upon it. Nice place, trees and lakes and breezy and civil. Strange autos, good buses. For the city that likes to tag itself the 'pub capital' of India, the pubs still all shut at 11pm. Of course, having been in London, that doesn't sound very strange but well, I have been in Delhi too. Not that I have yet had the chance to be in a pub here till closing time, but I am just talking, you know. In fact, I haven't visited any pub at all since I have begun living here. And that brings me to the city the post title refers to - domesticity.

Aye, it sits heavy on the shoulders, the mind, the balls, the heart, the soul, the everywhere. I feel my nomadic innards churn more and more every day that passes by encumbered in the chains of this domestic existence. It is not the intoxication I miss, lest some of you naively start thinking that way. I have learnt, rather harshly, that there exist different kinds of monotonies. You know, when you have a 9-5 job and little else in terms of having a life, there is a sense of monotony which is positively exhilarating compared to my current domestic regularity. Without going in to any more morbid detail, I will leave it at that.

As can perhaps be seen by my more than usual amount of output here on this space, I have time on my hands. A LOT of time. Yes, I have been told that I can and should use this plethora of time productively. You know, do something with it. Ideally, I would do something with it - roll it up in to a pellet and shoot boredom with it. But well, since I haven't mastered such temporal pyrotechnics yet, I will just confine myself to regular boring things like playing computer games endlessly and ocassionally staring out my window at the tots playing in the kids' play area of the building complex I live in or the middle aged men who like to think of themselves as the sporting kind by indulging in a tennis-ball based game of cricket on weekends.

Oh, I do have some work, in a sense. If things go as planned, I will soon be an educationist. Of course, it begs the short question - whose plan? Certainly not mine, I assure you. And for reasons this and that, I am a sort of half-willing part of the plan. As for the work itself, there is precious little to do right now, since we are past the planning stage and before the implementation stage. Limbo, I think they call it. And for those of you who have never had the privilege of visiting that surreal place, let me assure you, it is an experience that is more than just worth the wait, for it is the wait itself objectified.

So while I live in this city that for most people is the most normal and usual thing to do, I find myself stifled like a fly would under the falling foot of an elephant. Maybe, if I reduce myself to an ant, I will escape unhurt. Or maybe, the city will claim me as one of its own, and I will become another denizen in its vast sprawling underbelly, join fellow psychophants in their worrying about the right school for the kids, finding a maid and an interior designer, complaining about grocery prices and watching crap on TV over dinner with the family.

Amen.