By Vijay Phanshikar
A pencil of sunlight
Through the slit in curtains ...
Promise ! 
-  Self 

A USUAL scene, this ! As the twilight of the dawn yields to the crimson morn, a pencil of sunlight sneaks through the slight slit in the curtains ... and draws a broadening line on the floor. The room assumes an azure glow that lilts you out of the last minutes of overnight sleep. That little play of sunbeam on the floor wakes you up fully. You smile, stretch your arms and give out an imperceptible yawn. ‘Good morning’, you say to yourself -- the day has begun ! And it has begun with a sense of promise that rides on the little pencil of sunlight that sneaks into the room through the curtains, as if curtains have fallen on the night gone by, and the day is now emerging with promise -- crimson, golden promise the Sun often bestows upon Mother Earth.

 

 

The promise of a good day. The promise of bright light after the night. The promise that opportunities will wait for you to be fulfilled. ‘You make the effort, and we will be by your side’, the opportunities seem to assert. Each morning brings such possibilities -- immense, intense, and integral to life’s hopes and aspirations and inspirations. If you have spent a good night in calm sleep, the size of the day’s promise each morn brings riding on the sunbeam is large enough for you to feel elated. And, of course, the quality of sleep depends also on how you have taken the day’s toil earlier -- with a happy face or a grimace. If you entered the bed eager to see the next morning, then the story is different. For, possibly, you are scared of the night’s lonely hours and want to push through those as fast as you can. If you are eager to enter sleep’s embrace, then you have spent a fulfilling day -- and are eager to get ensconced in well-deserved good night’s recuperation.

 

The next morning’s pencil of sunlight through the curtains is the same every day, but what differs is your response to its dance on the floor through lightly swinging curtains. Morning, of course, is always welcome. But the sunbeam appears brighter if you are looking forward to good things. It is just a daily happenstance if you have nothing to look forward to -- or you are yet to emerge from the bad emotion of the previous day. As a child, I remember turning over and staring happily at the sunbeam’s dance on the floor almost every morning. In that happy mood, an uncertain poetry -- whose words I could never capture -- would emerge in mind’s inner sanctum. My wordless smile would then travel halfway to my ears, and Mother would hear its vibes in the distant kitchen. She would as if waltz into the room, tousle my hair and lift me in her embrace. My most days began like that ... riding on the promise the sunbeam brought !