i wake up to shreya ghoshal singing saibo. i have, since the movie released. she sings a few more times before I fully awaken because I set multiple alarms in intervals of fifteen minutes with interim snooze options. melodic melancholy mais c’est la vie.
i light up incense before i even put the toothbrush in my mouth. this incense ritual is the only thing i deeply miss when i travel. i have an tiny corner for this and equally tiny collection of incense. this is about the mind, almost spiritual but not religious. the first few minutes of incense, i spend in bed catching up on what the world did as i slept.
i brush and throw the windows open to let in the light, sounds and smells of madras into my room. they come all at once mind you, they come differently each day but they come nonetheless reminding me everyday of the city i love and the people in the city i don’t.
the first person i meet for the day is my doggo Z. it’s not a sentiment thing. it’s about the love. i have this super cheesy and off tune good morning song that i sing like iam orphan Annie and Z wags his bum and joins me in the happy dance like he hasn’t heard this every morning of his life.
sometimes i do the pretend game. i call out to him saying “Z kaanom. Z enga” (where are you hiding Z) when he’s right beside me. yes being the millennial iam, i did the challenge years before a gen Z even thought of it.
this he’s not so enthused about. sometimes he plays along searching cupboards with me while other times he just sits and stares. biological or not, my boy got his sarcasm from me. so i stick to the good morning song.
he then comes up with me to my room. by now, my crows and squirrels make their presence known. but there’s a process to this. i can’t feed them biscuits before Z. so i begin the process of making a coffee and switch my laptop on. it would be another half hour before i get to my laptop but it’s always on unless iam asleep. my poor lenovo suffers so much with me.
while the water boils, i give Z his mandatory share of biscuits and then break a few Parle g biscuits for the crows, squirrels and the occasional sparrows and the lone cuckoo.
i brew my coffee. pourovers mostly. aeropress if need something strong for a morning meeting that i don’t want to attend but have to.
then i do the coffee notes. especially if the coffee is new or if i have discovered a new brew method. i make coffee notes because my to-do is always done the previously day.
i plug in my earphones – 3.5mm jack that connects to my laptop cuz i be old school like that and turn on news/YouTube/music depending how surly i woke up and how much of that, the coffee has cured.
then it’s just pandemonium in the life of a ponnu from madras