Work From Park: 372

 He had it in him. To write. He did not have it in him the patience to hear with noise and disturbance. 

The apartment neighbours habitually kept the T V blaring with maximum possible volume. He was not bothered by the keeping the TV on part but hated the high volume which to his ears was nothing but white noise. To him it looked like these house makers were out to wreck his hearing sense. 

They want to cook and at the same time listen to onion serials or discourses. The words from the TV speaker need that extra decibel energy to navigate the bends and curves to reach the listeners’ ears. This science of sound explained to him the high volume but not the mindset of the home makers. 

Sandwiched between two such friends, his better half decided to follow suit. This was trouble from close quarters. His ideas and the hunt for words suffered. With frustration reaching tolerance limits, he carefully worded a request to turn down the volume or watch the TV after completing her works.  

Tutored in high volume by the TV, she burst out, "Do you have any idea when my works get over, not before midnight". These words must have penetrated the separating walls on both sides of his flat to bring in support from her friends, who were in their respective kitchens to join issues with him. He wondered how in the midst of their sound world they could hear his conversation? He felt like a cockroach caught in the glare of kitchen light. 

He spent some time on thinking about "my works don't get over before midnight" retort. He instinctively knew something very fishy, though the family diet is purely vegetarian. He wanted to question-with  a maid servant and cook on retainer, why should she struggle till midnight? 

He decided to observe how a day was being spent in the house, when the maid servant and cook report for duty. Slowly, the secret unfolded like layers of onion. 

“The maid starts sweeping, Madame goes behind or ahead of her, rearranging things on the floor and after the wet mopping repositions them in a different order.  While this is going on, a nonstop chatter gives them both company.  In the kitchen, cleaning of utensils start and end in the same fashion as described above. In between playing the hostess, a cup of tea or coffee is made and served. “ 

Her often-repeated logic “when someone comes to your house, you have to engage with them” is seen in execution. 

What happens when the cook comes, is little but not altogether different. Vegetables are washed, dried and kept ready with a cutting board and knife. The held-in-secret scientific/hygienic reason behind this is "the cook will not effectively wash and dry the vegetables before cutting." Standing by the cook's side instructions and recipes get exchanged. 

The cook promptly forgets the instructions and starts to explain her reasons for not following that recipe. Her untold reason, " involved, complicated and time consuming." 

Once the hired helps leave, madam starts to disrupt and rearrange what was disturbed and rearranged in the morning. The moment specks of colloidal particles floating on the beam of sunlight are noticed, action starts to overload the washing machine with curtains and drapes. Their miserable cry that they had taken bath only the other day are promptly ignored by her high volume tuned ears. .  Now, he understood why her works never end before midnight. 

Beaten but not down, he recouped his resilience and sat for his usual five pages of narration for the work (story) under progress.  Later the five-page effort would get whittled down to two pages after editing. This is the rigorous schedule ha has set and tried to follow it.  Naturally he gets upset with ‘’noise and homely disturbances. 

Each day unfolds with another episode to derail his work. This day he found the laptop and his doodling implements (when stuck in a thought jam uses doodles to untangle the gridlock with loopy doodles!) banished from their usual spot to a dark corner of the room. 

He knew the who and wanted to know the why. He could have let it pass. At least a paragraph worth of curious thought hammering in his head would have been captured. To show off his current awareness on the drive to evict the illegal immigrants from the country, he blurted out, He asked, “What this laptop did to deserve the eviction notice? The laptop is document ready with all software licenses duly updated!"  

This set off his better half to explode, " Talking about your laptop? It gathers nothing but colloidal dust. On it, under it and your *. docx files are full of it" She also wanted to show off, digging her heels in tech jargon. With the embers of this fire refusing to die down, his thinking machine went out of gear forcing him to call it off, as a bad day for him and the story. 

Getting published (@ own cost) and not banking in the profit after expenditure was a constant irritant in his relationship with the family members, of course spearheaded by the ruler of the house. Once, when he had casually aired his travails to a kindhearted friend, he had suggested to consult with an astrologer. Initially he did not grasp the meaning, but when the friend explained he understood the value of the suggestion and met with an astrologer with the birth details of all the family members. The astrologer, another kind person asked him to come back after a week. 

The kindhearted friend kept on reminding him of the one-week deadline, starting from the day one. Curiosity mixed with an ample dose of anxiety also made him to keep the countdown calendar going. On the day of reckoning, trepidation keeping him company, he left for the meeting with the kindhearted astrologer. He found him surrounded by well-thumbed books, probably astrological treatise.  A new notebook with its corners and center dotted with turmeric and vermilion was on the mat, in front of the astrologer. He mused, “Why the astrologer has not gone for some flowers to complete the decoration.” 

Warming up to the prediction part, the astrologer wore his thick shell glasses and peered at him through the gap at the top of the specs. Having set the stage and building up sufficient suspense, he started, “Your birth chart is very peculiar. All good planets occupy by bad houses, and the malefic planets spoil the good houses by sitting there. Coming to your wife’s horoscope, the mutual planetary influences annul each other. Your children tell a different story. The planetary positions and their influence vis a viz the parents’ horoscopes stay neutral.” 

Sufficiently alarmed by the kindhearted astrologer, he asked, “What is the outcome of all this vis a viz me?”

The astrologer said, “Every one of you want attention and none of you are willing to pay that attention. Our mutual friend has told me about your travails. On that count you are lucky. The conducive atmosphere for your work is available in plenty with greeneries…”

Interrupting the astrologer he asked, “Want me to become an environmentalist and run a ‘save the trees Andolan’?” 

Non plussed, the astrologer replied, ‘Your weak horoscope promises is not energetic enough to start an Andolan. Instead, you can choose a park and start Work From Park, like the WFH.” 

Silently cursing the kindhearted friend, the kindhearted astrologer, his weak horoscope, he left homeward with the decorated notebook!