Opened my internet banking and checked the balance – around
26K, “good enough for a week!” I said to myself and closed it. 11:15 AM
Another 15 minutes for my whole team to come back. Drafted a
mail in a hurry – Personal Emergency: On
vacation from today
Smiled to myself and “Hah, it indeed feels nice” with a huge
sigh of relief. Looked at my watch and with every second ticking, I felt a rush
of fear creeping through my mind. Wondered for a moment whether I am staring at timer in a time bomb ticking counting towards zero.
Opened my laptop and started to randomly look at the
gallery. Still images from my childhood and college brought back lot of
memories. I have had a lot of friends and what happened to all of them? In a
few moments, I am filled with questions. Is that all life is about? Few of them
married, a few moved on to other countries to settle down and a whole lot of
them – I don’t know what they are doing at all. Everybody has planned their own
life and moved on and I felt stuck. Opened Facebook timeline and it did not do
any good to improve my mood either. 12:15 PM
‘Huh... this memories thing is crap. I should have opened
Swiggy rather Facebook’ I thought to myself. Waited for 30 minutes to get the
food delivered. Completed my lunch and I don’t remember when I snoozed. Trust me when I say this, nobody can match
the happiness a Biriyani provides.
Woke up to
the doorbell and wondered as who this visitor to my house at this time. Found
no one at the door and stood there wondering - Is this God’s way of an alarm?
Trying to notify something to me? Security shouted from the aisle - ‘Sorry sir,
it’s some neighbor’s kids prank’. Sighed to myself and went to my room again.
3:00 PM.
Opened my laptop again and started cleaning up my folders.
Long time before, after hearing some inspirational speech in YouTube I had
started writing a wish list – things to do before I die. Started going through
the list skipping the impossible like Pyramids, Niagara, Amazon, Sahara, etc., and
going further down, stopped on ‘Sela Pass’.
I did not want to continue reading the list beyond that. I
wanted to go there, at least once in a lifetime and I do not know how much is
left in my life. I have always wanted to ride my bike there, but in a week? My
conscience interrupted with an image from earlier today – my bank balance.
Still, I thought why not go there? What better use can this credit cards be!
The next one hour went in a jiffy. Booked a flight to
Guwahati for next morning 6:00 AM – Packed bags – Purchased a jacket and came
back home. I kept asking ‘what else’ every minute with a mixture of excitement
and fear going through my chest.
I had nothing else to do other than looking at my phone to
check the time and every time I looked a WhatsApp notification kept popping up
from the un-official office WhatsApp group. I don’t usually open the group, but
I kept reading them through the notification. Few folks asked about me – felt
weird and then later they started with their usual ‘Our National Anthem won the
Best Song from UNESCO’ types forward messages. Last dinner in Bangalore, I
thought to myself and started. 8:00 PM
Even after dinner, ‘What else’ was still running in the
background of my brain. I wondered, ‘Is that within Indian border?’ ‘Do I need
a Passport?’ ‘will there be hotels for breakfast?’, ‘will I get food?’ ‘I don’t
want to starve and die’. Went to a supermarket nearby and bought some
chocolates. To be exact, one per day and I bought 7 Snicker Bars.
Excitement and fear are always divided by a very fine line and you never know which side of it you live. If you start trying to resolve that equation – fear catches up!
