Good Morning!

Gone are the days, when morning for a suburban boy meant an ear piercing siren from the gigantic steel plant back at my home town. Factory sirens since then has been silenced. In the Indian metros, sirens has given way to beeps. So in the early part of the day when you  barely lay your hands on the morning cuppa, it beeps. It beeps again. And again. Whatsapp messages. Unread 13.

With a well-rehearsed serious face(years of practice has perfected it), you casually pick your mobile, (wife seated beside) as if a barrage of work has been scheduled for the day as the whole country looks up to you to do a ‘Neeraj Chopra’! Eye brows lifted so as to form an arch, resulting in a wrinkled forehead , tea and the lips maintain a respectful distance as you lean forward to check what has suddenly disrupted the morning peace.  Yes……a flurry of good morning messages!!

By now, most of us have seen thousand shades of rising Sun, various bouquets of flowers of all possible combinations, seen-unseen-never to be seen birds, and an infinite range of gods and goddesses which invades our ‘always on half battery’ poor cell phones. The morning Nadir Shahs. Then there are those high voltage energy packed, thought provoking lines(quotes) which you forget as you read, but comes back again and again like those Sas-Bahu serials. Even a DNA test of the quotes, fails to determine its father as Abharam Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jawaharlal Nehru, Nelson Mandela and many others wrestle among themselves. All have said the same line with same punctuation marks, only they didn’t knew!

It was in the schools that we customarily wished our teachers ‘good Morning’. Of course there were occasional slips when the chorus greeted the same even during last period, but that was more out of inertia with no evil intention. They sportingly wished us back with a beaming good morning. But then, that was a completely different ‘era’, when in unzipped half pants we could conquer the world! Later in life, when we offered ourselves in the hamster wheels of the corporate world, a 100 meter gasping for breath dash (as heart beat takes half an hour to settle down) at the office meant wishing Boss a ‘good morning’ before anyone else can! All is fair in love and war! Your big efforts are amply rewarded as you get to to leave office early to honour those ‘written in blood’ commitments as frown faced ‘ex’ checks time near the dry fish (sutki) selling stall at the lake market, as the ‘half bald’ Greek God, prince charming in you is all set to appear! One of the most innocent place to date, as hardly anything fishy ever happens in a fish market.

But what explains this volley of pictorial morning wishes from unsuspected quarters? There is a certain AR Rahman rhythm in all the wishes that keep coming. Check these, in case you find similar senders in your chat history:

• Friend’s cousin who has mailed his CV couple of days back
• That maroon lipstick girl at the reception requiring help for her boy friend’s transfer
• That distant cousin who has asked for money (not to return) for (second) ‘last’ time
• That Kumbh mela lost-found brother looking for match making with a colleague of yours.
• A sarcastic Boss whom you committed a ‘turnaround’ but currently hovering around 38% achievement levels and batting in death overs.
• Neighbor aunty who recently learned to ‘play’ with whatsapp
• Brother in law in vacation at the Pattaya

One thing common among all of the above is the on time, ‘Good Morning’ wish even before the newspaper gets delivered. The list may go on. These innocent looking wishes remain a booby trap, ready to detonate. If you wish back, get prepared to a detailed, ‘to the point’ text which will corner you like a ravaging gun trotting Taliban. There is no escape. Its like a lofted delivery, you step out, and get stumped in a flash-life making an ‘Inzamam’ out of you.

However, life is a great balancer too. Not all wishes mean so ‘cruel’. There are indeed some genuine, straight from the heart wishes. Those are the ones, gold plated, which an ‘innocent you‘ send to others. Does the following recipients strike a chord?!:

• Ageing aunty (without a legal heir)
• Boss’s wife (whom you met once to return her the umbrella which she left at her husband’s cabin)
• Dad’s friend recuperating from a knee replacement surgery (who has club house tickets for IPL)
• The manager at INOX (who ensures you get the corner seats, while wife is away)
• The upcoming TV starlet (who smiled at you at the lift and checked if Voda signals works well in the condominium and then you asked her to give a missed call….as a part of serious R&D)
• Wife’s boss (who ensures she is kept busy even in weekends)

These are genuine wishes, completely effortless, which comes from within. You carefully bring those out from the closet, not knowing they ever existed. Each such wish which gets a double ticked blue, makes the morning tea, otherwise packed at the dingiest of Burrabazar galis smell freshly picked Makaibari!

Life goes on. You give as you get. The images keep gathering in the gallery. The phone beeps again. This time to alert the running out of storage space. You free it. In return you remain caged to ‘you send-I send’ world of ‘good morning’! Life moves in spiral.

Good morning by the way! Some where the Sun is rising!