“Don’t put off till tomorrow what is better done today”. Sister’s
admonition is fresh in my memory. Procrastination meant, in the 60s, an
hour’s detention after school, copying out “Business first, pleasure
after” 500 times.
“CHILL Ma’am!” shouts a young man in my IB class when I remind him of the deadline for the Extended Essay. It’s a different century, and this is a hedonistic generation. Funnily enough, my gray-haired husband echoes the same view: “Be laid back!” That unmitigated bureaucrat! I rather suspect he wrote out “They also serve who only stand and wait” 500 times in school.
Yet the deadlines continued for me. Finish the portions! Dispatch the manuscripts! Or else finish your work at home! Phew! Did my day have 48 hours in it or something? And that bureaucrat – when some colleague dropped in – “Is there any tea to be had?” Cool! He just has to be laid back, since there is a genie at his beck and call with 48 hours in her day! I have often felt like the poor princess in Rumpelstiltskin, who was told, “By dawn tomorrow, before the cock crows thrice, all this straw should be spun into gold!”
I often wondered why she did not strangle the cock instead.
A few years ago, a most interesting ghost visited Bangalore. It would politely knock on doors before entering. After it visited several households, the incorrigible Kannadigas found an effective way of dealing with it. They wrote “Naale Baa” (come tomorrow) on their doors. The ghost would knock and politely go away, only to be confronted with the same message day after day.
I get the same answer whichever door I knock upon. “Knock and it shall open” said Jesus Christ but He was being unduly optimistic. In a hospital where every heart surgeon performs three or four operations each day, a simple blood test is not ready. Anxious parents wait at the “Reports” counter at 3:00 pm. “Why?” – “Type maadtha idharey. Naale Baa.” After a collective agitation, the lady got off her mobile phone and on with her typing.
In the RTO’s office, they told my son, “We will pass you next Saturday.” After a week of Saturdays he got his DL, considering that he knew the ins and outs of driving before he was even 14!
At school I was struck by Macbeth’s extremely insightful philosophical soliloquy:
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
Till the last syllable of recorded Time …”
He was right! It does creep and merge into gray, misty, foggy blur, rather like the British rain. Yet something in me does not want that sameness. I like my moments to be tight little self-contained drops, separate and discrete, each holding its own defined events or adventures. The syllable need not resonate with the ocean. It is just a note in a birdsong, unforgettable in its utter sweetness!
If they “naale baa” my little gem of wisdom, its echoes will probably fill the “vale profound” with a plaintive disjointed wail, like the Solitary Reaper’s, until it falls to earth somewhere, some day!
“CHILL Ma’am!” shouts a young man in my IB class when I remind him of the deadline for the Extended Essay. It’s a different century, and this is a hedonistic generation. Funnily enough, my gray-haired husband echoes the same view: “Be laid back!” That unmitigated bureaucrat! I rather suspect he wrote out “They also serve who only stand and wait” 500 times in school.
Yet the deadlines continued for me. Finish the portions! Dispatch the manuscripts! Or else finish your work at home! Phew! Did my day have 48 hours in it or something? And that bureaucrat – when some colleague dropped in – “Is there any tea to be had?” Cool! He just has to be laid back, since there is a genie at his beck and call with 48 hours in her day! I have often felt like the poor princess in Rumpelstiltskin, who was told, “By dawn tomorrow, before the cock crows thrice, all this straw should be spun into gold!”
I often wondered why she did not strangle the cock instead.
A few years ago, a most interesting ghost visited Bangalore. It would politely knock on doors before entering. After it visited several households, the incorrigible Kannadigas found an effective way of dealing with it. They wrote “Naale Baa” (come tomorrow) on their doors. The ghost would knock and politely go away, only to be confronted with the same message day after day.
I get the same answer whichever door I knock upon. “Knock and it shall open” said Jesus Christ but He was being unduly optimistic. In a hospital where every heart surgeon performs three or four operations each day, a simple blood test is not ready. Anxious parents wait at the “Reports” counter at 3:00 pm. “Why?” – “Type maadtha idharey. Naale Baa.” After a collective agitation, the lady got off her mobile phone and on with her typing.
In the RTO’s office, they told my son, “We will pass you next Saturday.” After a week of Saturdays he got his DL, considering that he knew the ins and outs of driving before he was even 14!
At school I was struck by Macbeth’s extremely insightful philosophical soliloquy:
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
Till the last syllable of recorded Time …”
He was right! It does creep and merge into gray, misty, foggy blur, rather like the British rain. Yet something in me does not want that sameness. I like my moments to be tight little self-contained drops, separate and discrete, each holding its own defined events or adventures. The syllable need not resonate with the ocean. It is just a note in a birdsong, unforgettable in its utter sweetness!
If they “naale baa” my little gem of wisdom, its echoes will probably fill the “vale profound” with a plaintive disjointed wail, like the Solitary Reaper’s, until it falls to earth somewhere, some day!
No comments:
Post a Comment