Jupiter’s Solace

The other day the tea in my house was over. We generally stockpile a substantial amount of it and my husband was too lazy to open the new pack. Fortunately, I had just brewed my cup and had had it about a half an hour before my husband went into the kitchen to make tea for himself and my mother in law.

As usual, I resumed my evening routine, working on my assignments after getting the dinner preparations in place. I don’t cook daily. It’s mostly alternate days and its sufficient with some fillers here and there. My husband mostly relies on his mother for food. It’s been that way ever since I got married. I didn’t want to prove my cooking skills either. It just bugs me to cope with that kind of immaturity from a grown-up!

As I headed to the bedroom to resume with the half-done work on my laptop, I saw that mom-in-law had just woken up from her brief late evening nap. I entered the room making the least noise possible thinking that maybe she was fast asleep, fearing I would wake her up. As usual, she was busy checking WhatsApp messages on her cell phone. Maybe it was my sister-in-law on the other side. She is another nutcase you know. Just like my husband, a grown-up toddler! I get irritated at the abrupt frequency with which she calls. Sometimes it is morning-afternoon-evening-night… discussing anything and everything that she is doing in the day. And then, at other times she doesn’t call for days together. Such a messy family I tell you… Actually, selfish is more like it.

I had only put my laptop on charging when my husband announced from the kitchen to mummy that he has made a ‘compromising’ tea. Immediately, my mother-in-law asked, “Why?” And then he explained the reason. Having realized that because he was too lazy to get the new packet out, he and mummy would have to manage with a ‘not-so-good tea’, I just said, “There were tea bags right on the dining table. I wish he had used those.” Within a second mummy replied, “There is a lot of tea powder in the house, why use teabags?” I was like…. “It’s a crime to use your intelligence in this house.” And then, I kept quiet without further explaining my stance. It has started dawning upon me that it is useless to share your solutions with egoistic and stupid people. Anyways…

As I opened my assignment diary, I accidentally leafed through a poem I had written a few days back. It goes like this:

I climbed the stairs and Jupiter was to my right

The sky was full of stars, that was the only light.

I had eloped from the centre of my planet earth

To find a beautiful place of peace of no dearth.

On my way, I saw a gilled fish gasping for life

Moving past the shooting stars, succeeding strife.

As I reached the cube galaxy, I met an old woman

Sitting amidst the hanging cubes on her chair, wooden.

Some of the cubes were singles and others were duplets.

I wondered as I saw her feet, they were bootless.

She raised her hand at one of the cubes and my world

Turned upside down. She was a witch wearing a white gown.

When I returned to earth, nothing was the same… My old

Life had gone, what remained was only my name!

At times the solar system amazes me. I mean, there is so much unknown out there… And here we are sitting in the comfort of our houses claiming that we have or we want to have control over our jobs and families and relatives and children and this and that. And when we do not get to have it our way, we make other’s lives miserable! How nice it would have been if all human beings would arrive at this basic realization that we are only a speck in this universe and stop acting god. There are times I feel we should even stop acting man because like hell we suck at it. If that had not been the case there wouldn’t have been so many concerns about massive oil spills and rampant floods and hurricanes that have grasped the globe lately. We have seriously done something wrong which needs due rectification and I only hope it is not too late to mend…

Take the planet, Jupiter, for instance… It has the shortest day in our solar system. So unlike on earth where we can afford to wait a day which is comprised of 24 long hours to rectify any fallout that we may have experienced, the same needs to be done in 1/3rd amount of lesser time on Jupiter. Maybe it would be a good idea to send people from earth on this planet that is known to have 79 moons so that they could learn to make fewer mistakes and better, learn from them faster!

9 hours 55 minutes is all Jupiter takes to complete one revolution around its own axis. So technically, it completes one day in 10 hours when we on earth are barely reaching to finish half of ours. However, unlike earth which takes 365 days to complete one rotation around the Sun, which we refer to as 1 year, Jupiter takes 11.9 years equivalent to that of earth and that is referred to as one Jovian year. So, although things seem to be paced up there on a daily basis, we are better off in terms of a fewer number of days in one year here on earth. Hopefully, that will enable us to make better changes as far as the climatic and environmental damages that have been caused and thankfully we will not have to wait ~12 years to see a visible change, only if we take the right steps now!

Enough of the astronomical math. So, as usual, I cherished the moments of leafing through my poem and then started with my assignment. It took me a bit longer than usual that day as it was a relatively long and comparatively more difficult task. Somehow, I wanted to get done sooner because I and my husband had decided to go out for a dinner date. Surprisingly, even my husband did not come to disturb me while I was at work. I remember how impulsive he used to be ten years back when I would be late for our date. I would have to do all sorts of non-sensical things to make it up to him which I was really terrible at. If there is one thing, I can do well do mend things between us, it is to cook him a really yummy lunch or dinner. He is foody. So, that is really a good thing for me! But… things are different now. He has sort of accepted that my work is as important as our family to me and so he shares the workload of the house equally. He has managed things well to see to it that the necessary things are there in place. That sort of also gives me the satisfaction that my working is respected in my house and that too not only for namesake. He really is supportive.

I just got a bit playful and messaged him from the bedroom, “Sorry... I got late. I will get ready in a bit and then we will move out quickly.” I was about to save the documents of my worksheet and shut the laptop while simultaneously looking at my mobile for his reply. But he did not. Eventually, I got up and went to look for him in the living room and boy… I was surprised! He had ordered the food from our favourite restaurant. One of his favourite dishes and one of mine. To top it, he had also arranged for some red wine and all of it was neatly arranged on the dining table. I really can’t say the kind of satisfaction I felt that day. In no time as I saw him, I went up to him and hugged him and said a heartfelt thank you. I was really tired and he just knew how to comfort me without being nudgy about having to make it to the dinner date. We both had the delicious food and the wine and the next day I gave him a surprise visit in his office at lunch and we made up for the date that we had missed last night!

There are times I wonder if things between us will remain the same after we have a kid. Yes, I am one month pregnant. Just got my reports this morning and I already have this anxiety if my husband will give me his undivided attention after our baby. More so, will I be able to give him that much time? Will I be able to make up for the lost dates and the missed times with him the way I did this afternoon by getting him his favourite chicken delicacy prepared at home and packing it up with some scrumptious homemade tandoori rotis and jeera rice, all of which I took to his office! Will we love each other the same way…? These are things that I am concerned about constantly. Although on the surface I might be all about my work and the deliverables at hand, this is something that is usually ‘on’ at the back of my mind.

While I was returning back from his office, I reminded him to get our brand of tea from some shop on the way. I checked it this morning, the stock is over. And although this morning I somehow managed to make the tea early and mummy did not realize that I had indeed used the tea bags while brewing the tea, it will be difficult to keep it away from her notice for too long. She’s an ace cook and will be able to tell the difference if she tastes it the second time I feel.

For a very long time, before I got married, I had struggled with having peace and solace in my life. Many people would tell me that once I get married it would all be fine and I laughed at them saying, “By marrying one only increases the complications so that he or she can reminisce about the solace they had before which they did not value.” But now I can’t say which one is true for me… Whether the solace that I was searching for and was about to find when I got married and again lost it… or the humdrum around me in which I am now supposed to feel and find the lost solace and feel content about it. I don’t know… All I know is that my marriage, like the Jupiter’s differential number of days in a year that makes its one-year equivalent to 11.9 on earth, establishing a substantial identity for itself, gave me something different, something of my own! And this is what I refer to as my Jupiter’s Solace.