Savyasaachi

It was a rainy Sunday evening and I was standing in my new apartment with my regular evening cup of coffee. I had moved in just last week. Not due to any practical reason, I’m afraid to admit, but because I wanted a change in my life. Since the past year, I felt suffocated in my current state of being. I had a good job, a great family, a fairly nice social life – on the whole, it was a good life. But I was stuck in a rut. I felt like my life was an endless, unbreakable cycle of monotony from which I couldn’t escape. I felt there was something forever missing in my life and I tried in vain to search for that elusive “something”. I was not depressed; just tired of the way I was living. The way I was never really happy and doing things to fill a kind of void in my life.

All these thoughts were going on in my head when I was distracted by a movement outside the window. I turned to see some ladybugs that had just flown in and were sitting motionless on the windowpane. Ladybugs, they always made me smile. They reminded me of my childhood.

My childhood was the most amazing part of my life. I was one of those kids who are difficult to contain, brimming with some wild energy that only comes by virtue of being a child, always fascinated by the world around. I used to be filled with wonder for everything around me, from a pen cap to the universe. Every object was revered with admiration and scrutinized with curiosity. And ladybugs held a special place in that universe of mine. I was constantly struck by how beautiful those creatures were. Their tiny structure, the wings, their hardy yet fragile body and the glorious combination of black and red; every time I would see a ladybug, I would run to catch it and then rush in to show it to my mother. My mother once told me that it almost used to be as if I had caught an angel!

My thoughts were jolted to the present by a thunderclap. And that thunderclap suddenly made me realize what I was missing in life. I was forever looking for a “joie de vivre” that had started deserting me as I was growing up. Nothing filled me with awe anymore and I was always running around in circles trying to figure that out. As I grew up, I left the clichéd “childlike wonder” behind me in order to be a grown-up. No wonder I felt so tired and so jaded and was forever lamenting about that “something” missing in my life.

I sipped on my now cold coffee following this train of thought when suddenly my niece came rushing in. Bubbling up and down with enthusiasm she screamed, “Masi, look! I caught a ladybug!”