One of the unfortunate things about my new job is that I have to be in office by 8.30am. Although it is only 16 miles (around 26km) away from home and should take around 20-25 min, the morning traffic is bad and it takes me at least 30 min. So, keeping all these calculations in mind, I had to keep advancing my wake up alarm and now it is set to 6.30am.
Every morning when I get up and move around and happen to glance outside the loft window, I unfailing get arrested by the view outside. Dawn is just creeping over the skyline and everything is a little dark. The whole world seems to be slumbering- right down to the houses, streets and the cars parked in the driveways. Only a few lonely vehicles on the way to early morning work seem to be awake. Everything is so peaceful and for a moment I am taken away in time to the age when I would see this time of day only when we had to go somewhere. I would not want to get up early and yet be very excite for the journey ahead. We would stand shivering and half asleep for the bus/train. It gives me a just a fuzziness of happy feeling - I am warm in the happy moments with family - without remembering the details which would make me nostalgic or sad.
The other persistent memory is of my school days in Durgapur. My school, DAV, was in the middle of the steel township while I lived with my uncle's family in the coalfield community and that too at the farthest end. I would be the first to board and the bus picked me up at 5.30am to reach school by 7. I remember getting up and ready in a slumbering household (much like now) and waiting in exactly the same kind of atmosphere - with dawn creeping while the world slept and the school bus the only lonely traveller.
I did have some sort of company. The coal excavation is a 24 hour process and the shaft would always be active. I would just look at the repetitive mechanisms to while away the time. Later, my cousin brother joined the same school and I started having company and it was even more fun (although the first year at that school was one of the most difficult times for me).
And I go back to all this in the one minute I stand at the loft windows!
Every morning when I get up and move around and happen to glance outside the loft window, I unfailing get arrested by the view outside. Dawn is just creeping over the skyline and everything is a little dark. The whole world seems to be slumbering- right down to the houses, streets and the cars parked in the driveways. Only a few lonely vehicles on the way to early morning work seem to be awake. Everything is so peaceful and for a moment I am taken away in time to the age when I would see this time of day only when we had to go somewhere. I would not want to get up early and yet be very excite for the journey ahead. We would stand shivering and half asleep for the bus/train. It gives me a just a fuzziness of happy feeling - I am warm in the happy moments with family - without remembering the details which would make me nostalgic or sad.
The other persistent memory is of my school days in Durgapur. My school, DAV, was in the middle of the steel township while I lived with my uncle's family in the coalfield community and that too at the farthest end. I would be the first to board and the bus picked me up at 5.30am to reach school by 7. I remember getting up and ready in a slumbering household (much like now) and waiting in exactly the same kind of atmosphere - with dawn creeping while the world slept and the school bus the only lonely traveller.
I did have some sort of company. The coal excavation is a 24 hour process and the shaft would always be active. I would just look at the repetitive mechanisms to while away the time. Later, my cousin brother joined the same school and I started having company and it was even more fun (although the first year at that school was one of the most difficult times for me).
And I go back to all this in the one minute I stand at the loft windows!
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