Those days....

In my family I am known as the night owl. I stay awake till 12:30- 1:00 in the night reading or surfing the net. I am not much of a morning person so tend to be grumpy in the mornings without having my cup of hot coffee. I cannot start my day on a weak note. I guess everybody has their early morning blues.

Just like Monday Morning blues- early morning blues are terrible times. In school when it was exam time, morning was considered the best time to slog. And 6’o clock was not enough to get up and revise. You had to get up even earlier. Otherwise you were labelled as a bad student or rather not a very serious one. Like as if I cared.

But I had no choice. What I hated most was getting up at a time when everybody was so engrossed in dream worlds of their own. I often remember my grandma tugging at my night dress or patting my face to wake up. I used to turn around and sleep. After 5 minutes, a pinch in my bum would pull me out of my bed growling like an annoyed puppy shaken out of sleep.

Any time I complained about the rest of the inmates sleeping, my grand mother would remind me that they all passed the stage of studying and they had made something out of their so-called lives. I used to consider it so unfair that the rest of the household would be bathed in darkness except the hall where I was expected to study. At that age what kind of understanding can a 12 year old have? Though I used to detest those early morns of studying and keeping awake, I knew in the back of my mind that my grandma did it for my sake.

My grandma would so sweetly prepare tea for me and replenish my cup till I completed the ordeal of revision for the exam. I remember asking my grandma to wake me slightly earlier at about 5:30 in the morning to revise for my Hindi exam. I was all pepped up when she woke me up and started to revise. My grandma was sleeping beside me as I revised.

After an hour or so when I observed the clock I noticed a funny thing. The dial of the clock was just reaching 5:30. This meant that my grandma woke me up at 4:30. Funnily enough it did not anger me. I had a good laugh to myself and continued.

I guess some things just can’t be explained. When we feel the need to work hard nothing can deter us from doing so. But when we are forced to do something we don’t like we automatically rebel.

I considered my grandma my human alarm clock, but when I saw her dozing peacefully after waking me an hour earlier, I realised she was only human and not a machine to be so precise.

Now when I go home for my holidays, I watch my cousins cribbing when being woken up. My grandma does not disturb me anymore.

When I see my cousins grumbling and slamming the door of my room, I can see myself when I was 12 years old. I am able to be more accepting of the situation now.

Like the saying goes “This too shall pass.”