Paighaam laya saawan….

I don’t know if I’m merely reading between lines or if truly there is something called signs!!

I hate Mondays even in the best of my moods. I suffer from Monday blues all the way till 3 pm on a regular working Monday and today was worse than usual.

This monday morning began with my almost missing my office shuttle and the relief when I made it, kept me from catching my usual forty winks.

I’d fought with a close friend for no apparent reason over the weekend and we were still feeling raw about it.

As I entered my ODC, my manager motioned me to join a call that I could not make heads or tails of. This was followed by a meeting with my lead and my manager where I began with a volley of complaints and problems. Uff, my week never had begun this bad!!

The day somehow dragged on and while I was groping over a particularly tricky code implementation, I suddenly went blank. It was around 7.00 in the evening and I’d already reached my daily quota of saturation. On a usual day, I’d take a walk outside my office building when I feel saturated; the cool breeze and moon have a good effect in clearing my head. Today, I just picked my bag on an impulse and caught the 7.30 bus home.

Surprisingly, the bus was quite empty and I got a window seat. I randomly chose a song on my iPod and it turned out to be my favorite – Chaiyya chaiyya from Dil Se..

I slowly began to relax and as the bus moved out of EC and on the elevated Hosur road flyover, I realized the heat was stifling and that was part of my discomfort unconsciously. I wished for a cool breeze and as if in summons to my wishes, the strong smell of earth instantaneously filled the air and within seconds, heavenly droplets of water started falling everywhere.

As the heat dissipated, I kind of calmed down and eventually started humming along with Sukhwinder Singh’s raspy vocals. The change gradually put me in an introspective mood and I started going over the day’s events. The song changed to Shaan’s Paighaam laya saawan, yet another favorite.

Then I don’t know what happened; it was as if a voice from within spoke, that I was doing my best at work and if that was not enough, fretting would be of little help. For one and for all, I had to stop taking it all personally and, forcibly ensure family and office remain separate without interference. And the best sentence of all – today might have been bad; but thank God for that, it could have been worse!!

The rain, the songs and that voice within managed to put everything in perspective. And so simply at that, while a conscious effort would undoubtedly have been tedious.

There is always a silver lining. We just need to look more carefully. From different perspectives. And voila, the sentimental side of me took over – truly a paighaam from saawan…