TBD (to-be-done)

Bangalore: the serene good-looking city with a climate to die for. Dewy chilly weather, uncalled drizzles, leaving you nostalgic anytime anywhere, regardless if you are sitting in office attending to some very important work with a closing-in deadline or walking through the streets of a market trying to get the grocery list checked. The weather at this time of the year is so deadly that it will leave you in any mood without any prior notice. As much as I love this part of the seasons, I feel it is dangerous also, feeling nostalgic and laid back is sometimes very relaxing but when you have a hundred things to do in a day like this, it turns out treacherous. For the whole day it gives you a feeling of peace, relaxation and happiness only to reveal the wrath at the end of the day when your list of things to-do stays untouched.

On a normal day, that is five days of the week (excluding the weekend, hoping they are a reward for the week long hard work), one has office work to attend to. No matter what kind of job you are in, if it is a full time job and if by any chance it is paying you well (or you think it is paying you well!) most of times you will be dead deep in work whole day.

Sometimes very joyful, satisfying work and most of the times, unsatisfactory, machine like (no errors!) work. So by default we all have a long list of things related to work to be done by the EOD (end of the day, in layman’s world). Other than these we have another list, the neglected, always pushed-till-it-blasts-list of personal work to attend to. These lists are like the “Akshaya Patra” in Hindu Mythology, it keeps filling with more and more things to-do how much ever you take out from it. It’s the never ending list of chores…

There are a thousand reasons not to get to the list, from being very busy at office to blaming the beautiful monsoon like I did at the beginning of this post. From catching a movie in whatever free time you get in hand to finishing a book you were reading. One gets time or “makes” time for everything else in life which they find interesting, other than things on their list. So we don’t get to these chores because they are plain boring and because they can wait till you finish day dreaming. The boring list.

This list can be very interesting for someone who is not responsible to get it done. I saw a friend’s boring list once, other than the common married-woman things to do, she had very amusing things on hers. Like scolding the maid for not cleaning the tea pot properly: when asked why is it there, she said that she feels sorry for the woman the moment she looks at her face, thanks to all the sad life stories of hers the maid keeps telling. And so she keeps pushing this tedious task to the next day and to the day after that.

On days when there is nothing to do, I mean nothing with fire written all over it to do (note that these kind of days are very very rare and hence precious), one gets plain lazy. To do nothing and pass the time is bliss and everyone wants some of this. The poor old list lay there, with its contents almost overflowing, like the leaking tap in my bathroom (number 5 on my list) which is screaming for attention right now but as I can switch the main water supply off when not in use , I live with it.

When some of these tedious tasks get in the way of life, you have to get to them. And when one finally does so and is able to remove this one item from the list its pleasure beyond words. Oh!  To tick off a task and see it checked or removed from the list, you wonder why you didn’t get to it earlier. The after effect of such simple things unattended for so long pushes one to think if they are responsible enough in life, are they making use of their time properly. Sometimes this feeling of self-development is so strong , that it makes you promise to yourself , you must get a grip over yourself and finish everything on the list today, or probably by tomorrow morning or rather by end of the day tomorrow for sure, after you submit the report which has to go by then. And within minutes of the wide awakening, just like that, you are lost again, in another list or another book or just yet another rain which brought back childhood memories.

The cruel list of boring things....

                                         But nothing just a frown it brings...

Wish I had a magic wand of fun…

                                          With a whoosh I could get all this done…