Sudden Death!

I am republishing this entry from my pevious blog as idleness partly defines me. It was written sometime between May & August. If there are days when I live with an extraordinary zeal, there are days when I die a sudden death too :) This is an ode to my actively lazy self...

They say morning shows the day. But this particular morning was determined to prove human assumptions about Nature wrong. The sun was up and I, as usual, was glowing with an energetic optimism. But before I could wish myself 'Good Morning', a delicious languor stole over me. My body went slack and all basic activities and rituals that fill our days seemed like they would require an Herculean effort from me today. The rooms, the furniture and Mom & Dad inspired me...They inspired me to do one effortless act - yawn! How predictable and supremely useless life seemed! The things we do, day after day, seemed meaningless, trivial and trite. Let's chase 'nothingness' today, my body decides and my mind quickly accepts the suggestion. And me being my body and mind's slave...

...I succumb to lassitude, languor, indolence, lethargy - ornate words for plain old 'laziness'. A sluggishness numbed me, and 'inactivity' became my credo for the day. I am gonna laze, loaf, lounge, while/fritter/idle away the tyrant called Time and let the grass (and whatever life forms it can support) grow under my feet. I want to gather moss and other forms of vegetation. So I lie on my bed with 4 books as a pillow (The real pillows are basking in the sunshine- 'being aired'- Mom wishes she could do something similar to me), languishing in this lethargy with a curious pleasure. Calls become missed calls, SMSes remain unanswered, mail unchecked, Mom's queries are met with a studied indifference, magazines unread and papers, I realise and countless others will affirm, are really best suited for swatting li'l insects which lose their way into your room.

There's a pleasure in nothingness which one must indulge in, occasionally though. My body, apart from carrying its normal metabolic activities, is in a state of rest. Am in inertia. Am a living example of inertia of rest. And am determined not to let inertia of motion disturb it at any cost. To change from inertia of rest to inertia of motion, force is required. And who the hell is gonna force me to do things against my wish?. I am pleased with myself. My mind is thinking - but this doesn't call for much labour from me. It's thinking about this indolence that cocoons me. I am in love with this shroud of lethargy that clings to me. I feel drowsy and yet no sleep invades my being.

Umm...I am enjoying every second of this...Now I know how that fat, white, smug tomcat feels when it basks in the sun, tosses and turns languidly on the corrugated tin roof, stretches its paws langurously, takes one look at its surroundings and then deciding it's not worth more than a fraction of a second's glance, yawns, shuts its eyes and surrenders to laziness. The awful song Tum dil ki dhadkan mein rehte ho rehte ho (it's from the movie Dhadkan, right?) from some FM station playing at a neighbour's jars my senses and Sunil Shetty's pathetic apology for a face looms before my eyes. But I am too lazy to lift myself off this luxurious bed and shut the window. I shut my eyes quickly to get rid of this nightmarish Bollywood image that threatens to spoil my pleasurable existence.

I open my eyes and feel good. At peace with the world. Now I feel like a Hedonist! I celebrate Hedonism. I aggressively pursue the pleasure principle for a few hours, lying in total rest. Right now, it's the pleasure one derives out of doing nothing 'constructive'. Other pleasures can wait. Thankfully, breathing doesn't require much effort on our part. Else, I would have been six feet under the ground now. In that picture I have drawn, the X coordinate is the bed and the Y coordinate is the wall and am tightly bound willingly by the yellow strands of laziness and the purple strands of pleasure...And no, there's no relation between the two axes. Nothing's being proved! Except that indulging in a luxurious Lethargy is...umm...good!