Happy New Year

          

          

  It was a Sunday morning. Like most Sunday mornings I was expecting dread with breakfast. I suspect many others who took the train with me to business districts every day were also expecting it and experiencing it as well. 

            All of us in identical shades of blue shirts, mimicking our mood - bought online, carrying our tiffins with a bulky laptop to boot, switching between Huberman and Latest Bollywood hits on Spotify - all of us on a singular mission of increasing shareholder value, while wondering if we would get a seat on the train that would always be running late on Monday mornings.

What was unknown to me on that morning, however, was that the dread was not about the upcoming week. I had been numbed into believing that working diligently was the purpose and mission of my life, among other things. 

This dread was something else. It was not because I had had three cups of coffee since I had woken up at seven a.m. I allowed myself an hour more of sleep on Sundays. It was the least I could do for my tired soul and my body. I was sure of that but then what was it? What did I fear the most? I had absolutely no clue.

I couldn’t put a finger on it. So I picked up a copy of Stephen King’s On Writing. I was fascinated for the first 40 pages and then I dozed off. No, it was not the writing that put me to sleep. It was my body reacting to the dread. For some reason, my response to stress was always to sleep. 

I woke up a few minutes later by myself. Not with a start. But gently, as one does after a peaceful nap that is meant to refresh you. But I was not refreshed, in fact, I had been dreaming about something which was pleasant but had failed to recharge my mood. Maybe because I knew that it was not real? Who knew.

What was it? I thought about it very hard as I closed my eyes. I tried to re-enter the world that I had just exited. It would be subliminal, I thought to myself, if I managed to get an entry into that imaginary world which had not seemed as terrible as the real world. 

At first, I could only see glimpses but most of it revolved around comfortable share-autos, which seated only two passengers instead of three. My thighs and nether regions could finally breathe. And my auto was flying over the traffic, almost gliding through like a Youtuber's drone. I watched outside with glee as we flew over Behrampada, which was not a three storied slum anymore but a modern housing complex with a common playground. Was I dreaming? Yes I was. 

I woke up again. This time it was my cat. The cat wanted food. "But I just fed you breakfast", I complained. She walked away in disgust. I expected the dread to have gone away by now. Or at least I should have figured out the root cause. "Yes, perform a root cause analysis on a Sunday", I thought ruefully. But nothing came up. I wanted to busy myself with the routine tasks. So I decided to do a grocery run to the local market. 

The pit in my stomach continued to grow as I made payments on my phone. I almost never carried any cash anymore. It was a terrible habit but I couldn’t do much to break it. "Going to an ATM is a pain" I thought aloud to console myself. 

After lunch, sleep evaded me and I could not focus on the book. It was at about five thirty in the evening when I realised what the dread was about. In order to distract myself I had taken up another routine activity - organising and sorting out my books as per subject. I may not have read every book that I had bought in the last one year but I knew what the book was about. It was then that I stumbled upon a black journal peeking out from under the big pile of books. I opened it. And there it was - the big hairy audacious goals that I had set for myself. 

Most of them had been ignored. I had not even come back to them once throughout the year. In the end they were reduced to mere words written in a fit of ambition, which I was often afflicted with when my chips were down. When my optimism would shine through in the face of defeat and rejection, just like it did for a young Stephen King.

That Sunday marked the deadline that I had set for myself, fifty two weeks ago. My subconscious knew that I had wasted an entire year chasing goals which were not set by me. I had improved systems which had not benefited me. And I had ignored the vision that I had set for myself. 

The dread in my stomach was not of the coming week but of the year that had gone by. 

"Happy New Year" I said to myself coldly and closed the journal shut.