Sarina woke early each morning. A few stolen moments of quiet before the world around her imposed the demands of the day. It was still dark, her eyes slowly adjusting in order that she could manoeuvre herself around the kitchen without turning on the lights.
Negotiating the space we live in, with its familiar angles, levels and placements are likely the closest insights into a depth of darkness. A glimpse of what it must mean to be blind. A person of vision using words as insight and glimpse to describe the act of being unable to see is ironically paradoxical. Is everything one knows to be so only a product of not knowing its absence …?
Warming her hands on the coffee cup Sarina walked to the veranda. And there it was the blaring throttle of the engine, diesel fumes and the miserable sight of a mud-caked truck intruding upon the first hints of dawn.
Indeed, there is nothing silent about sunrise – chirping birds, children heading to school, the milk van tooting, and the steady strokes of a broom against the ground.
Morning for some begins with clearing and cleaning the remains of the night, for others it is the rush to stock fresh vegetables, fruits and the hard-earned catch of the day. The fisherman and the baker settling down to a chat and a tea, their day’s work almost complete. The juxtaposition of a clock brings different meaning into each of our lives.
Dusk makes Sarina sad, brings memories of a husband no longer beside her, an empty bed and a listless sleep. But for some inexplicable reason she still rises with a heart filled with hope, a promise of what might be. Possibility.
But now this truck. And that’s all it’s taken. A miscreant truck parked on the street right outside her home, disturbing her deliberately carved out moments of peace, and propelling her into a tizzy of angst and upheaval.
No longer being able to contain her anger, she screamed out aloud, “Hey you. Shut that damn thing off! What right do you have to park in this spot every evening and cause this commotion each morning.” Her tirade remained unacklowledged. The driver happily listening to his favourite tune on the phone sending out waves of tinny music to add to her frustration.
And thus the mornings unfolded. Without control over the external circumstances. And without control over her own unbalanced, almost visceral response to an act she simply has no authority over.
It’s a public road. And any driver can park wherever the hell he likes. That’s the law. Like it or not.
We own our little thousand square feet of space. We call it home. But yet we wish to influence the area around us. In broader terms it’s called civic sense. Keep my yard clean, pick up pet poop, don’t litter and don’t dump your garbage on your neighbors doorstep. That’s simple and easy to comprehend. And apparently easy enough to implement. But what happens when your personal sensitivity clashes with what’s happening in the environment? Where does ownership end and tolerance begin?
Where does passive acceptance become wise against the call to social activism?
When does turning a blind eye become the advise of the hour, rather than sitting in the midst of an annoying start to the long day ahead …?
There is a truck around each corner. That’s the flow of life’s highway. Being stuck in traffic when you’re running late and the continuous ticking of the watch when time is the enemy of a vacant mind.
There is though a strange phenomenon of getting accustomed to that which we would prefer not to bear but realize the choicelessness of the situation. It’s not something as lofty as surrender or acceptance but the ability that human beings have to just get on with life. Children do it with remarkable skill and apparent ease. Parents just download all kinds of unsavory things and wildly inappropriate situations onto these little creatures and their hearts and minds somehow cope. Adapt. That is the word. What is the theory about survival – rings a bell but not quite clearly.
Much like Sarina, I too have a metaphoric truck that disturbs my harmony. Yet, some days, I can look out at the fields and strain my eyes for the peacock, oblivious to a mound of trash piled under the tree.
Seeing, non-seeing, hearing/listening, light/dark. I’m thankful for my share of trucks. To paraphrase an old saying, the universe gives you hurdles each according to your capacity. Long may this be true.
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