Enduring a lockdown

make no claims of having discovered something latent in me, hitherto unexplored, during the course of the lockdown. I have however, come to realize that if you seriously, set your mind at something, you can turn inexorable in executing it to conclusion.

For instance, my bookshelves, all cluttered and messy, had been fanning my discontent for months. So, with plenteous hours at my disposal, I felt I could demonstrate my tenacity with an extra bit of elbow grease. I started by removing the books panelwise, then scraping off the dust across every pore, and putting them neatly back. Now every morning, I soak in an eyeful of my prized ‘literary’ companions. Keyed up now, I decided to repeat the exercise with my sizeable collection of DVDs. I separated the English, Hindi, Tamil and Bengali titles and then re-arranged them as per the language and the year of release; a leviathan task but highly fulfilling in the end. With my fetish for orderliness now jutting forth, I turned towards our precious gramophone records.

Though these were in fair condition still, the covers had been divested of their sheen. Polishing them one by one and placing them in order in the steel ‘almirahs’ made me feel that human effort can sprout to a veritable high if it concurs with one’s inveterate desires.

Looking at those gramophone records, it dawned upon me that life isn’t linear, it is a circle and what goes around, comes around too; the cycle of ‘karma’. Metaphorically, life that whirled at a speed of a 78 rpm earlier had now whittled down to the speed of a 33 rpm, but at the end it was all music to the ears. So, it was a question of reorienting yourself ‘audibly’ to a different groove without going into a sulk. Period!