100 steps

My mom's father is an admirable man. One whom you can say 'has lived his life'. Even at the age of 70 odd, he keeps himself completely occupied with enterprises which a person half his age would shrink from taking on. Amongst others, one of his admirable qualities is the 'After Dinner Walk.'

As a kid, whenever I used to visit the grands' place, the ADW was one of the look-fwd-to activities of the day. After a nice and sumptuous dinner of granny's specialty, we cousins used to run out of the house, and stride up and down the street multiple times, keeping pace with the granddad. While the grand old man was busy occupied in his own thoughts, we kids used to babble nineteen to the dozen and cause enough ruckus in the street for heads to pop out from windows and curse the noise-makers!

Over the next few years of childhood (when not staying with grands), I lost this habit. Gradually my mom instilled in me the discipline of 'atleast 100 steps after dinner' for proper digestion. This caught onto me, and then began another of my odyssies till date!

The favorite place in my house is the terrace. So, what better place to walk after dinner than the terrace! I go round and round, definitely more than 100 steps), soliloqui-ing about topics currently on my mind, admiring the Orion and other constellations. Pacing up and down brings with it such clarity of thought that I used to go to the terrace with a heavy heart, soul filled with sadness of the day, and come down back to the house, a changed man, with a much lighter heart, owing to the break down of the problems into smaller chunks of issues and self-resolved temporary solutions and consolations! At times, the monologues were amazing and I wish I had a recorder to track how fascinating one can think when one is walking. But alas, the sparkling thoughts remain with me, undiscovered, till it withers away.

Digression. There are certain things that fascinate me; things that make me gape in awe. And in almost all of my ADWs on the terrace, I used to see two such things every night. The moon is one.

Many great things have been written by great poets about Moon. It is one of the most fascinating things I have ever seen in my life! The shining white ball on a Full moon's day is a view to cherish. It is something for which we have to thank God for having given us eyes! Often, I keep staring at it for hours together and never get bored!

The second is Wright brother's invention. As most planes have to pass over our home before landing on or after taking off from the Bangalore Airport runway, there are almost 10-15 flights exercising this activity between 9.30 pm and 10 pm. Since I hadnt sat in any airplane for as long as I can remember, it remained a dream for me to sit in one of them and experience the flight. Its different now, 2 years later, when I have flown enough in airplanes to have got bored of it. But, back then, whenever I saw an airplane during my ADW, I used to stare and long for my journey in what I call 'an engineering marvel.' [This dream finally came true on March 6th 2005 when I flew from Bangalore to Chennai, en route to Boston via London. It confirmed my belief. It is indeed an engineering marvel!] Ironically, it was when I was having this ADW when I heard about the planes crashing WTC in USA.

Coming back to the topic, now, in my US apt, all I have been doing after dinner, since 1.5 yrs, is walk from one end of the room till the other end, swinging a cricket bat to keep me occupied, till I get claustrophobic. Winter wont allow you to go out of the house. There is no terrace. I do not prefer to go walking on the roads, at night, all by myself. But, last night, I did walk out on the road for the first time in US. After a heavy dinner, with the cell's earphone plugged, I roamed around the apartment complex, chatting with a friend of mine, who has recently come to US.

It felt great to walk...
It felt great to see those multitude of planes again...
It felt great to see the beautiful Moon and the constellations again...

It is the small things in Life that gives immense pleasure....