Five

These days, a good cry is an easy bargain.

I'll be honest, I'm not one of those who can hold back the floodgates when they threaten to burst. My excuse is that my eyes are always dry and tears are good mositurizers.

Now lest you start to imagine a full fledged brawl, nothing like that.

These days, I time myself.

I'll give myself 5 minutes to cry.

So its only 5 minutes ,not 6 and not 4 but exactly 5...

So if I must weep, I better make it a good one...

If I must stress, I'll time that too. So that the 5 minutes are well worth it.

Whats the point of all this anyways ?

One minute you are worried you've made all the wrong choices in your life - career, friends, lovers .. and then turnsout that the worst choice of your life is what restaurant you suggested on a dinner date with your family..

And if that wasnt bad enough - you lived to tell the story that others didnt because you chose to run in a particular direction.

Thats just one of the stories that made me bawl this week.

...So I'm timing myself - when I'm cribbing and complaining and stressing for all the mundane meaningless reasons that I choose to worry about while the ground shakes for those around me in ways that I cannot help or fathom.

I took a rickshaw on saturday to U's place and ended up talking to the rickshawalla.

I find myself doing that a lot more since last week too.

I instructed him to take a diversion road instead of a crowded cross section and he asked me if it was because I was scared and I found myself telling a complete stranger the truth.

He told me that I should not be afraid as often one would run into ones worst fear on the diversion road in life.

Then I guess seeing my chastisized expression (yeah ... been there done that) .. he decided that we could move over the pleasantries and chit chat while we waited in bumper to bumper traffic.

He said he was upset because he and his wife were fighting a lot since the mumbai attacks.

He had a day job in a factory and his wife worked as a maid servant. He drove a rickshaw in the evenings and his wife stayed at home with their two kids. Since the terrorists struck, no one wanted to go to movies and malls late at night and he had been taking in 60% of his prior daily income home last 10 days. He was angry because he didnt know what else to do.

I told him that I'd pray for him and he said that its good that some people still believed that their prayers would be answered.

The reality is that all that crap that Eric Clapton said about "Time can bring you down, time can bend your knees" is infact true. And never before has it rung truer in an apocalyptic Nostradamus world is ending sort of a way.

So these days, I'm timing myself.

5 minutes is all I get when I do something that is unconstructive but totally compelling in an addictive sort of way.

So that if I have to absolutely waste 5 precious minutes of my life on crying over spilt milk or coffee or otherwise - I make it a good one.

And then after that - I get up and get on with the business of Living.

Amen.