Lately we all have been living most time of the day in incubators, locked away from fresh air and sunlight….hardly do we get to know if it’s sunny outside or have the clouds veiled the big yolk on the sky behind their silvery fluff. Plugged onto one channel of FM or another I get to hear the shifts in the moods of weather, when it gets windy, dry or hot. It’s through the magic toys of telecom that I know about the world of outside. Far away from the real walking talking world I sit locked up in my small semi cubicle like location in a hall flooded with bright yet soothingly milky beams of energy saver lights

 

I am sure most of us work under pretty comfortable office environs…. I am also quite happy with the large hall where I sit with it’s bright yet milky lighting coming from the energy saver tubes. The many split AC’s keep the temperature pleasantly cool even uncomfortably cold too sometimes still being in this  customized atmosphere connected to the world through internet, phones, radios and mobiles I often end up feeling oddly sad and living in an unreal, lonely world.

 

My office is such that its suites are peppered over four floors of the same building and to me it’s a treat to be going g over skipping to one or the other when work needs require. Climbing up or down the flight of steps and deliberately staying away from elevators (not very comfortable in closed in shafts) I revel in the short time for which I can look at the blue sky and feel the power of wind at such height. Just yesterday Summera, Ahsan (both of whom are my teammates) were discussing about Day time light savings and Ahsan threw us a rhetoric: “So what good will it be?”

I promptly replied: “Oh you’ll be able to go home in daylight!!”

Minding the 0’s and 1’s of the digital world I am sure most of crave for the music of true kind…like for example while praying in the silence of a conference room of our second floor I can distinctly hear a quail singing and  subconsciously I pray long and slow…soothed all over from the spiritual and the natural therapies.

 

No I am not complaining, just thinking that how much we are missing with the robotic routines that we have been programmed into…gradually sedating the part of mind that imagines and wonders….

 

How many days it’s been since I saw an eagle swoop down from the sky? When was the last time I saw the sun rise…Day and night have just become one of those normal, generally understood facts with no more charm and  wonder at how it’s really amazing when light fades and darkness engulfs. Or how the tiny ray of light struggles through the thick carpeting of darkness and bursts forth into the brilliance of day. It’s been ages since I looked up and exclaimed, : “Hey that cloud resembles an elephant”….do not remember when was the last time I focused on the  echoes of the wheezing crickets and  tried to find the little insects in the dead of night.

 

My parents and friends think me crazy for often asking my folks not to come pick me up in car and I go home hanging in buses halfway and then walking part of the way home. But I have realized that with privileges comes remoteness. After a long day spent holed up in my office eyes glued to computer’s screen and brain spitting up words for formal documents with smartly dressed semi tired looking people around, I very much more prefer some pumping up of  legs, exercising of eyes, gulping up the fresh air though badly polluted and in all feel the world as it truly is.

 

After moving around the crème de la crème of computer scientists and engineers it is like a realization of a new world, the other half, the majority of the people that are there in my country. Rubbing shoulders with the less privileged makes you appreciate what you have, it gives you recognition of  pain, sorrow, struggle and the blatant face of life out of the bubble in which we exist.  Blended in the hordes of  travelers, occasionally exchanging a few words, I realize that to them I am no one special , I am just another traveler….my education, my family background, my designation at office is absolutely nothing noteworthy…and I learn the big lesson of  equality…I see the bigger picture.

 

Alighting from the bus and walking home while dodging the cars and wayward pedestrians there is a spring in my step as I briskly walk homewards, with the breeze refreshing my senses and the exercise revitalizing my energy. I occasionally look up and smile at the new moon or a spot a star or two… draining down all the thoughts in my brain to somewhere distant because this brief feeling of liberty is somewhat exhilarating.  After the crunch of the day and living through both artificial and natural there is no better feeling in the world than thinking that there at home your parents and siblings wait for you and you think yeah man maybe I am happy to be finally getting home!!