Lockdown Mornings

This is Day Fifty-four of the lock-down in India, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the country is shut down and several professionals, especially in the corporate sector and services are working from home.

Since I was a teenager, I have always been something of a night owl. Not for me, the 'early to bed early to rise' mantra. Sitting late at night, watching movies, reading books has always been an indulgence of sorts. But these couple of months have brought a change to all of that. Working from home has brought it's own challenges; endless phone calls, messages, and quick conferences, they all mean that during the daytime working hours, there is little room for a concentrated chunk of focused, continuous work time. Chasing this elusive mind-space, I started to get up early in the morning. I have heard it all before, of how early morning is a good time to work productively. I have always instinctively believed it even, but I had just been convincing myself that it was not for me. Old habits, they don't just die hard, they sort of convince you that they need not die as well. 

But as the habit is broken for now, or so I hope. Early mornings are a great time to work. I have a great space to work as well, a cozy study room with a work desk next to a window facing east, where as I work, I can see the colors of the morning wash away the night. Our home is an apartment that faces a rented accommodation for young working professionals. When I come in to work at around four or four thirty in the morning, the lights of the buildings outside the window are usually out, the bright yellow neon street lights still aglow. Sometimes one or two of the windows are lit, and I imagine some young professional who is an early riser; or maybe, he or she is, like I was during the younger days, someone who just goes to bed with the lights turned on as they doze off to sleep with a book to keep them company, under a nice, warm blanket.

Early mornings are great to work, when you know you have a couple of hours, before the rush of the daily routine. The mind is blank and uncluttered, especially if one can manage a few good hours of sleep, thoughts can be organized neatly, ideas can flow. Outside the window, from behind the eucalyptus trees, a hint of light slowly creeps up, giving birth to their silhouettes against a brightening sky. The color of the sky varies everyday here, from a dark violet to a rosy blush, to a flaming orange to a soft, mellow blue. For several minutes the orange glow of the street lights are brighter than the sky, as if they are daring the sun, putting up one last fight. But soon, you cannot tell if the street lights are on or off and the day has come.

Other creatures give me company as well. Birds of, I don't know, how many kinds coo and tweet their morning calls. Faraway a rooster crows at the coming morning. If I look out, I can sometimes see the early birds taking flight and they are as beautiful as they are at sunset, when they are returning to their nests. The morning azaan sounds at a mosque near by, as the priest calls he faithful to prayer and somewhere around this time, the sound of an odd vehicle rumbling through are heard from the main road which is a short distance away. The sun follows the brightening sky sometimes as a mere speck of dull light behind a mass of clouds, sometimes as a clear, bright disc of fire, but always beautiful to see. He climbs slowly but surely, higher and higher, and I can now see the bright glow in my peripheral vision and I know that it will soon be time for me to break my work as the morning routine begins. When the sun reaches the top of the eucalyptus tree, the trees in our apartment complex are in sunlight. As if on cue, the squirrels start to chirp, in their shrill calls, continuously. The sunlight is now hitting the screen of my computer and I get up to draw the curtains, and shut down the computer until I can get back to work after breakfast.