Mind Doodles

Today was one of those mornings when I just couldn’t open my eyes. Just wanted to stay in bed. Ah! The pitfalls of working, of having deadlines, of knowing that you are one of the cogs in a well-oiled machinery which needs every tool in place to function. Added to that the fact that I have been having some trouble with sleep lately. Exhaustion is supposed to lead to sleep isn’t it? Then why isn’t it happening?

Dying to get out of the city sometime in the next couple of weekends and go to the mountains. If nothing else, I will just go to Chandigarh again. Although it’s the plains, one can at least see the mountains from there. Basically, go anywhere where there is not even one iota of any of the following:
The 6.30 am alarm, the gym, rushing to catch my carpool, making small talk with people I don’t give a rat’s ass about, horrible ads on radio (Have you heard the Saral milk one? When the little girl tells her mother, “Mummy, Mummy! Aap bhi saral doodh laya karo!” …why is it in this orgasmic “come on baby, light my fire!” tone? She is speaking to her mother dammit! And that too about some f###ing milk that has just started being imported in Delhi from Rajasthan, not the moon!”) and reminder alarms set on my phone which go off throughout the day reminding me of the calls I have to make and the things I have to do, dealing with authors who think they have written Nobel-winning literature and that the world will collapse if their book has a word different from what they initially intended it to be, designers who do not understand what abstract actually means, proofreaders who think they know the language more than editors, the mind-numbing traffic on my way back home, the nearly four hours I spend traveling every day, the guilt at not spending as much time with my parents as I should and over the couple of emails I should have answered as soon as I got them and now it’s too late. So on and so forth.

Now shall I quickly count the blessings too? Phone calls, smses, blog comments, scraps, emails (from everyone who cares enough to let me know that they are thinking of me), the thrice-a-day calls from my dad (at 9:30 to find out whether I have reached office safely, again at 2 to find out if I have eaten and how my day is going and the final one at 6:30 to ask whether I have left for home), a wonderful boss and work environment, the fact that my office is in CP and that there are a million things to do with myself when I step out, dull carpool rides which give me the freedom to plug on to my discman and be in my own paradise, the gorgeous sunrise from my balcony every morning and the even more amazing view of the distant skyscrapers at night, and finally for http://kirrinisland.blogspot.com.

Incidentally I have been asked a few times why I chose to call my blog so. Well, here is the story behind it. In Famous Five’s first adventure, we are all introduced to the characters — Julian, Dick, George (short for Georgina), Anne and Timothy (the dog). From the first book to the twenty first, George becomes and remains my favorite character for a variety of reasons. But mostly because she has an island, not a fancy resort kind of a thing but a wild one with a broken down castle in it, complete with towers and dungeons. It’s totally her call what she does there or who she chooses to take there with her. She is the sole mistress of her kingdom.

Which is why Kirrin Island rocks…whether in the world of Enid Blyton or blogspot.