Crackers and Candy bars
[This story/ekphrastic experiences are snapshots of my diwali days distinctly drawn from deeper register of my memories and current days. So, It juggles between two timelines —]
Hours after driving corners of city in search of crackers and candybars finally found a store at the banks of Krishna river selling crackers as it looked like a hero of disparity between plus and minus. The excitement didn’t last long as shopkeeper started to slowly turn off the lights and shut it down as me and my grand father approached it. Radiation of thoughts started to flood within ranging from discontentment to finding myself of being in solitutde with dark blue skies filling up the frame.
Woke up on a weekday morning battling the unrelenting tremors beside my bed. Mindlessly I rush to brush my teeth,( Brush | bathe | breakfast ). Takes me 35 minutes — calculated — measured. I sit in the car as I drive past Lawrence expressway , Constantly switching between radio chanels, thoughts and imaginations while stuck in the never ending traffic. As the clock strikes 09:00 — attention distracts from finding tranquillity within traffic to within daily standup. Leaned back at my desk as I day-dream —
Woke up early in the morning on Diwali without any complaints and was drawn towards kitchen as my grand mom is cooking delicious gulab jamun swimming in syrup, hot crisp jalebi that dissolves in mouth and laddoos formed into golf sized balls creamy pale color. Still there was the discontent feeling left inside of not being able to gather enough crackers for the festive night. As I started to head towards the balcony to peek outside and see the beautiful patterns of rangoli. Promptly, my eyes were closed making it impossible for me to comprehend the situation.Slowly as I opened my eyes excitement flooded exponentially as I see crackers and candy bars laid in front me. asked my grandmom if this was a daydream of the tangential as a route to the heedlessly thoughtful, which is a dream I want to have. She smilingly asked me to pinch myself to believe it is real while happiness doubled exponentially.
By evening the house was filled with fragrance of sweets, it felt like they are generating abundance amount of oxygen. The crackers when landed on a grain of sand on a said point as it blasts and expands almost resulting in a sound wave that passes till gandhi chowk which is directly proportional to the joy, freedom and festive ecstacy within self. I am sure other residents there didn’t find my experience unusual. They had their own, similar stories.The sky fades into a clean, pristine Carolina blue, punctuated by cotton ball puffs floating above the rugged moonscape that envelopes us just like a van gogh painting . Bright ochre yellow and matte beige compete with iron-rich red cracker explosion.
Woke up and came to office today expecting we would burn crackers by the basketball court while eating candy bars made of shakkar. Complaints aside, staying in traffic taught me patience, while restrospective meetings, standups, promiscuous pair programming and OKR meetings helped me overcome ego, insecurities and re-assured there is enough work to drench the quest. RDC Academy served as capacity to condensate ignorance with plethora of training resources that contain excess of knowledge which cannot be contained within empirical limits. Hackathons bought us together while happy hours never failed to spread joy. Arent these reflecting the values of Diwali and isn’t this setting that seems to be home.
[ Pinches self to believe if this is real ]
