City Vox Popili – A Life in Rhea’s Day, Greater Kailash 3
As part of The Delhi Walla series asking citizens to “write down everything you did in one day.” Send yours in 400 words max to thedelhiwallasoofi@gmail.com
[Photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]
[By Rhea Matta, a lawyer in Greater Kailash 3.]
I always go to bed knowing the time I would like to wake up. Whether or not I succeed in waking up at that time is a whole other story.
It was 9am. With a slow gait I walked outside my room and was greeted by my parents having their lemon honey tea on the dining table. They had already completed their respective morning walk and yoga session. Out of sheer habit, I glanced at the facing room, and allowed the waves of nostalgia to hit me, remembering the time my dadu and dadima, and later, my chacha, would gleefully come out of that room with a newspaper in their hands.
I started my day with my morning chants (being a practitioner of Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism). I then got dressed and hopped on to the table to catch a conversation with the parents. The timing was right, I got a glimpse of my sister in Gurugram, along with her little daughter, on the WhatsApp video. She was rushing her way to work, updating our parents about the previous day, simultaneously pacifying her daughter’s excitement for the day-care.
In the office, I was informed of what needed to be delivered and sent out to clients. Processing the copious amount of work ahead of me, I was sure that I would need coffee as my companion. With sparse breaks, I somehow managed to leave just in time to reach home by 8:30pm (not too late to be able to go for my run without my parents expressing concerns). I then walked to the park in our colony, put on the earphones, turned on the electronic music, gathered my thoughts and set the pace for my run; the unperturbed half-hour with myself was in fact my motivation to get through the day.
The day ended with me remembering what my day used to look like more than 15 years ago. A time when the sun felt warm and the days were full of physical activities at school. I would be back home by 2pm. My sister and I used to watch TV shows in the afternoon with our grandparents while relishing roti and sabzi cooked by mom, then scurry out to tuitions and basketball sessions. Back then I truly believed that this is what life would always be like. Little did I know that a day in my life would never look the same again.
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