As the sun had set today, my boredom with a sedentary life increased by the tenfold; the cost of turning and twitching away the whole day in bed. And Not having anything to do, household chores taken care of already, not even having any laundries to do was making my tweezy hands tickle and sway at doing something, anything at all!
Usually, in such times, I pick up a book, spend my time on Youtube or either watch, rewatch a show! Things that extremely lazy bums do! A lazy bum with no purpose in life, which I absolutely abhor to identify myself with! And so the search to accommodate my thirst for work had begun!
My first unsuccessful attempt at it was when I went to our backyard garden. Some rose bushes and a few vegetables are all we have there. Not many options, but what we have grows in a staggering amount! Like green onions, and sweet potatoes and pumpkins! I was looking for any of the minimal chores like watering them or ripping out the weeds. But my hyper enthusiastic mum had already done them too! Being unable to find anything to do in the gardens, I tried out my luck in the roof! In the small makeshift birdhouse we have. My second most favourite place to look for a solitary sanctuary!
In our small birdhouse, there is this one pigeon that ruled them all! Almost like the one ring to rule them all, but Roghu was more feisty than any bird I have ever laid my eyes upon. Like that third spoiled child! Roghu, my beloved bird used to eat from my hand! Every time I stepped into the cage, all the other tiny devils would have had ran away, exceot this fabulous creature who would not! Made me feel like an Arab sheikh at times.
But usually, in the nights, it kept to itself! And so, birdhouse too had failed me! What remained was for me to hit our DIY garage, where my crotch rocket usually sleeps! A few minutes of dusting and wiping later, I was on the road following the dusking northern star right above the horizon. Following it towards a destination that like always remained unknown!
A short ride away, there is a small tea shop that was run by an old man. Majid chacha we call him. Father of seven children yet still has to work for his livelihood! Because, his incapable sons thought it was better not to waste their hard-earned money on that one guy, who has wasted his hard-earned years after them! Like always, as soon as he saw me, he said "Baba aishe bosho, chaer liquor hopay dilam".
There remains a table and four chairs still, at the farthest corner of his tea shop, always empty, for the four of my mates. A tungsten 100 watt bulb, hanging from the roof, the place looks as if it is stuck in the seventeenth century, right when Edison invented light bulbs for the first time ever.
And while sitting there, on that old almost rotten table, sipping on the worlds most delicious milk tea, I am writing this on my phone while occasionally looking at Majid chacha! A teardrop fell out of my right eye, but it shouldn't have. Men don't cry! But technically, I didn't too. I just shed a drop of saltwater! Like his sweats that wet his clothes after a hard day of work. And here I am, in his company, fulfilling the work that I set out to find at dusk while my phones battery life drains away.
