So....I am here on this early morning thinking of things that I don't understand why I am thinking today.The sun is just beginning to peep out and its lukewarm rays are just hitting me tenderly.I can hear the birds chirping out on the trees and could feel the cool breeze coming into my room. And I started to think of all those wonderful mornings I had through my life and thought of putting those out here.
To tell the truth about, I am a lazybones especially in the matter of getting up early in the morning but I can do that if need arises without any complaints. These days I wake up by 5.30 in the morning just because I got to start my work at home by 6. But that doesn't give me an option of enjoying the morning. So I am leaving out those mornings when I am working. Other than that, the early morning of my teenage years is what I remember pretty well. I have spent most of my holidays at my mother's house which is in a remote village about 80 km far from where I live now. There, our grandma was a real strict one on the matter of waking up in the morn, bathing, and going to the temple which we three (includes my two cousins) never could agree to. So we used to sleep like anything in the mornings and granny starts shouting but since we sleep upstairs and granny can't climb the stairs we used to escape from a direct encounter from her early in the morning but used to get what we deserved by breakfast time because we can't skip out that, you know....But the mornings there during some festival days like Vishu or Onam were splendid ones. On Onam, we used to wake up early and go to the nearby fields to pluck flowers for our flower carpet. Those cool, dewy mornings of August were the ones that I really hold close to my heart. We three had little bags made of palm leaf which we fill up with small pretty flowers and we come back home and arrange our flowers to make a beautiful "pookalam." Those were real fun mornings.
The other morning that I remember there are the mornings on Vishu. At that time, we wake up by 2 o'clock in the morning to burst the crackers and we used to have lots of them because my uncle used to work for a cracker shop and they used to give him packets of different kinds of crackers for free.So after we finish off everything by 4 in the morning, we sit together in the smoke left off by those crackers and talk about all the previous years we have spent together.Then we get our "kaineetam" from everyone at home. After that before granny starts shouting, we run off to take our baths and rush in new dresses to the temple.
Then comes the mornings at my home, when I was in my 8th standard, just after the Christmas holidays, my dad joined me for tutions at a place about 2 km far from my home and the tutions were from 6 in the morning and that put an end to my enjoying-morn-sleeping days. I had to wake up early, get ready without caring whether it's a dry day or a wet one, mount on my bicycle and rush to the tutions. On those mornings, the first thing I remember is the songs that are played in the temple. Even today, when I hear those same songs from the temple in the morning, I remember my morning tutions. My friend A who is also my neighbor used to accompany me to the tutions. He too had a cycle and we used to ride together talking about everything under the sun. He was a real good company and those morning rides were real fun. It was on one of those mornings that a man started following me on his bicycle and started asking me what's my name. A's cycle had got punctured and he used to walk on those days. So this man started pestering me daily and one day he called me by my name and I was shocked. He looked a real rogue and I thought it's time to put an end to it. I went and told my dad. The next day, he went before I started from home for a walk. That day, I didn't find that man or my father on the way. I wondered what happened. When I came back home, he told me he had confronted the person who was troubling me and had given him a warning and had asked him his whereabouts and he said the guy was terrified. I was happy and I didn't find that person ever anymore. But days later, I found out that the person whom my father had confronted was not the one I wanted him to but he was none other than my crush, S. One day I was talking to S and he told me that a man had questioned him and he had fooled him by saying a wrong name and wrong whereabouts. I smiled sheepishly but didn't let him know that it was my dad, LOL.
The other mornings I remember are the Shivratri mornings when I would sit for the whole night in the temple ground watching Kathakali and then in the morning return home with my friends drowsy like I had a real hangover after drinking the whole night. Why I went to watch Kathakali is a story for yet another post which I will post here sooner. The mornings when I was at Coimbatore were real fun. There also my work used to start at 6 in the morn and we used to make black tea in the morning and drink it so fast and rush out in groups to the office which was just 15 minutes away from the house where we 6 stayed.I loved those walks because the place where our house was situated was a bit remote one and it was a real beautiful place with lots of open fields, big trees lining the roads, a Ganapathy temple on the way, a Men's gym on the way (LOL), and we could even spot peacocks on the way to our office.Before that during my training days, I used to live in the hostel and at those times, I used to go to the open terrace above the fourth floor and used to study there in the early mornings to avoid the din of the lower storeys. The wind used to be so strong above there and it used to be so cold in the winter months but i did love those mornings when I would sit on the chair there and watch the sun coming out bright and happy.
The mornings which I spent at my father's sis' house during my vacations are also noteworthy. There I had no other job other than eating, reading, playing alone (because none of the guys or gals of my age were there). So I used to climb the tall champac tree in the courtyard of the house and used to sit on one of its high branches and read my books. I used to sit there till lunch time. Those mornings up on the trees were lovely. Once my aunt couldn't find me anywhere in the house and searched me everywhere and on the end my uncle found me up in the tree immersed in my book unaware of the surroundings.
The mornings that I hated most were the ones when I had to travel to Coimbatore from my home on early Monday morning. I hated that bus trip because throughout the trip I used to sleep with my bag as my pillow on my lap. That was horrible because by the time the bus reaches the bus station, my neck would have got a bloody cramp and I had to catch another bus from there again which would be so crowded to my house. I really hated those mornings.
I think I have really dragged away my post to a lengthy one. So its time to close the post here. Will come back to talk to you again. Till then, Have a really sweet day dudes ...
