SAME OLD, SAME OLD

Lalita Iyer Musings

The routine continues unabated. For all of us. Otherwise, you rot, and everything around you rots. Meanwhile, the Universe continues to move along its own predestined trajectory. Nothing you do or pray for will change that. And yet, there we are, trying to bring order to things. That, too, may be predestined.

I do not mean this in a negative way at all. You can change things as they are, because that, too, will find its own space.

My father was a stickler for routine. Many super-seniors are. It gives them a sense of purpose, a sense of proper timing, a sense of form. I have learnt to respect that.

Actually, life as a journalist, while having its exciting moments, is also about timing. Being in the right place at the right time, reporting at the right time. It is all about deadlines. A sense of timing, built around routine. And yet, ‘routine’ is a feared word.

M comes home every evening and asks me how my day was. How should I answer him? That it was a well-timed routine, without making him think that routine is a bad word?

Routine might sound humdrum, but it is not. It is comforting. However, for those used to the rat race or a fast-paced life, it might feel as though they are being put on the back burner. For some, though, this can be comforting.

Let us break the routine once in a while to see if we are ready to step out of our comfort zone. Deadlines, for instance, break the routine. So does breaking a pattern and selling an idea to yourself. That is challenging.

Luckily, I smile and say, “Same old, same old.” That seems to comfort him.

My basic nature is cheerful, and I tend to be enormously pleased by small things. What really got me thinking about all this, several years after retirement, was a question posed by an intelligent, thoughtful person. When he met me for the first time just the other day, he asked, “What are you doing with your life, madam?”

What does that question even mean? Does it deserve an answer? Is it not enough that we live day by day? All of us will perish, some with more people at their funerals than others, though it really does not matter to the dead. And so, that question continues to unsettle me even now.

I write and I live. My calm, smiling demeanour does not seem to be enough. Nor is the fact that I am at peace with myself. He has run several full marathons and is also consulting at several places. Good for him.

And so, it becomes slightly ironic, because my refrain in conversations with a friend or two is that I should die in my boots. This after meeting my aged and healthy but immobile MIL, each month.

Then I got thinking. Imagine me lying in the bathroom, cleaning up, with my slippers on. Would that count as dying in my boots?

But then, why not? Is breathing your last at the stove any better than doing so at the bathroom door? But, really, what the good old romantic in me meant was that I should be sitting at my little white plastic table, my hair gently lifted by the wafting breeze, my phone in hand and a glass full of rum beside me.

That would be Yamalicious...

(Lalita Iyer  is a senior journalist)