Sitting on a Hydrant with a Coffee

Never give a writer (or a wannabe writer, for the sake of modesty) a cup of coffee/tea and a place to sit and five minutes to ponder. Because then his mind starts wandering and he ends up writing something.

So the story begins. Aforesaid wannabe writer had to pack his clothes before leaving for a month-long trip, complicated by the fact that he also had to move to a different apartment right in the middle of not-being-in-town. These conditions necessitated too much of organization and planning, something said writer is distinctly uncomfortable with. Plus, his nose was feeling weird and there was a mild rise too in his body temperature, which he thinks might become a full-blown fever in a couple of days.

In such a febrile state with plenty to do and little motivation, he decided to forget it all for a few minutes and get himself a coffee. Considering that the weather is on the warmer side resulting in his little apartment becoming a little too stuffy (like his nose), he decided to get his coffee and sit on the fire-hydrant peeping out from under the building walls and watch the traffic go by. And, inevitably, ponder.

Ponder, ponder, ponder! (Heil fellow geek, if you get the Pinky and the Brain reference!)

Having comfortably ensconced himself on said hydrant (albeit not too comfortably owing to the not-so-flat surface that hydrants possess to dissuade people from sitting on them) and having had the caffeine rush and its accompanying analgesic properties, with the cool breeze blowing through his long terribly dishevelled looks-like-a-homeless-person hair and pondering, pondering, pondering, he notices a couple walk out of the building holding hands. A couple he knows. A couple who are too engrossed in each other to notice the hobo-like-writer on the hydrant. An all too familiar feeling of unmentionable emotions hits the writer who then proceeds to not do anything about it as he has learnt to do in the past year. Yet, he proceeds to dispel such notions about the demerits of his inaction, since obviously, inaction is better than bibulousness ("better", implying less harmful to reputations, livers and wallets).

Cars zoom by. As writers have been doing forever, he ponders on the small part the individual plays in the vast cobweb called society (and God is one crazy spider to have built that) and yet the hopeful importance that the individual ascribes to himself in the larger scheme of things only to be sorely shot down later. Ambulances yell and zoom by. Again, as writers do, he ponders the transience of human life and the meaning of our existence, ephemeral it may be. A car stops at the intersection blasting loud hip-hop music. Now, he ponders how art rescues us from the mundaneness of everyday living making us feel like soaring eagles and when the music is turned off, plop! falls the eagle to the ground, breaking his silly beak. A cop stops his car and looks at him. Now, the writer ponders the suspicious nature of human interactions and bemoans the loss of trust and love replaced with the mad, mad rat-race which makes us worse than rats (which actually like each other once in a while).

Too much of pondering has resulted in an empty cup with only unstirred sugar at the bottom (the writer likes sugar and plenty of it) and a thought hitherto delegated to a corner is now taking center-stage: Pack your damn clothes! Reluctantly the writer leaves his pondering seat, goes home, opens his laptop ponderously and "expresses" it all. Here's to hoping he gets to pack his clothes eventually!