Observations Of A Day Dreamer

The soft, pink sun peeped through the blurry horizon of the distant lake as I awoke to a serene summer morning. I watched from my bedroom window as the colourful mango tree facing it, blossomed beautifully: a haven for yet more colourful birds. The harmonious song of the mother birds calling to their young chicks juxtaposed against the exasperating cooing of pigeons — a typical sound of city life. It was only seven o’clock in the morning, yet soon the daily crowd of cars began to collect on the roads.

Within two hours, the streets began to resemble the chock-a-block nature that Mumbai is famous for; with cars, buses, trucks and auto-rickshaws accumulating on the road. Accompanying the traffic, hawkers began to pour into the streets; selling street food. The potent smells of these foods slowly raised up to my room; so much so that I could almost taste them. Despite the scorching rays of the Sun beating down, the foot traffic also began to grow.

Beyond the road, I could see the green park, filling up with children of all ages — some accompanied by their parents — entering with uncontainable enthusiasm. I watched dreamily as the children played football and other games. How different the simple life of these children was then the bustling and constantly moving life of those on the road, rushing to get to the office. I stopped then to think how different the life of people living so close to each other can be. Some — like me — sit idly in their bedrooms, gazing into the life of others; while not that far from me were others hurrying and hustling to make the most of their day.

My mind drowned in the oceans of these profound thoughts, as I pondered more about human nature. The sun (now a lustrous orange) dipped gently into the horizon. Though the sunlight died out, the city lived on, becoming even busier than before. There was a seemingly endless stream of cars and pedestrians. Each random passer-by I looked at led a life just as complex and vivid as mine, a life just as filled with happiness and grief, a life populated with its own unique ups and downs. Yet, to me, they were nothing but a blur of traffic among thousands of others, and to them, I was but one of many illuminated windows. As I sat here and penned down my story, they were living out their own epic, one which -- in all likelihood -- I would never know anything about, and one in which I would never be anything more than an extra.

Truthfully, there was something uniquely freeing about this realization; the idea that there were 7 billion lives which my actions would never impact in a major way was scary, yes, but also motivating. It meant that the person who would be most impacted by them is me -- and thus my life was largely under my control. Comforted by these thoughts, I drifted once again into sleep, knowing that I would wake up once again to the same pink sun, the same chirping birds and the same busy streets.