Red coloured day

Sundays are different. You know it’s Sunday even before you wake up. Unlike other days, you can feel Sundays on your skin. Even before you squint at the watch to check the number of hours by which you’ve overslept.

A steaming cup of ginger tea. A window. A lone palm tree. Savouring them all. My mind is devoured by reckless thoughts. Sunday morning thoughts.

Breakfast at a filmmaker’s home. He talks passionately about his desire to portray the post-coital Indian film Heroine. Also tries to explain the difference between ‘exceptional’ and ‘present day writing’. His gooseflesh speaks louder than his voice. All this, over a spread of old-world hospitality.

Empty minutes spent in an auto with a colleague. The roads are near empty. I see a blue VW Bug. It makes my day. I travel from the West to the East, but remain geographically numb.

All the shops are shut. Even the ones that don’t sell anything. Except the malls and the fast food joints. What a waste.

Chatting with an old friend. Remembering the old times. Ignoring the Change. Discussing an old school project we once did together. Chromatography? Yeah, something like that. School was good. Science is better.

The Sunday newspapers. Sprawled in front of me seductively. I ignore them. I clean up instead. How could I?

I’ve encountered Sundays of the lazy variety before. I’ve also lived through Sundays of the 48-hour variety and the hung-over variety. But this Sunday was none of those ones.

And something tells me they felt it too. Each one of them. The smiling auto rickshaw driver. The cashier at the Mall. My school friend. My colleague. Neil Diamond. The filmmaker. The guy behind the fast food counter. And the driver of the Beetle.