Afternoons rock

I say this to whoever listens: I love afternoons. I have loved them from the time I lay sprawled by my mother's side doing homework, telling her everything that happened in school (leaving out no detail howsoever slight, as Hercule says), while she - now I know - snatched 40-winks and managed to grunt at the right places. An afternoon raag played very softly on the transistor under her pillow.
I do the same now, when Jaya launches into the entire story of 'Blood Diamond', or some such; World Space plays me a shuddha sarang in the background, as I make awake sounds while mostly asleep.

Jokes apart, I love afternoons. As I write, just now, the reasons for this are playing out. The surprise-dragons of the day are slain; the bill-leeches have been squashed; the menu-monster has been fed; banker, taxman, and other Hydra-heads have seen reason. The fangs of various snarling relationships have been sawed off. And the afternoon breeze has set itself loose from its own demons. It blows and swirls uninterrupted, bringing in sounds from many levels. Very small bustling birds somewhere nearby. The gloop-gloop of a voice-thrower bharadwaj a little further away. The rustle of the avocado tree that I planted in the optimistic phase of my moon. Even the sounds of yet another building coming up seem less focused - more casual clangs rather than the morning's manic buzz. Cars on the distant highway seem less purposeful too, rolling along without the self-importance of morning or the urgency of night.
On top of it all, someone or the other - by my choosing, or by the selection of world space radio, is rendering an afternoon raag.
All afternoon raags uncannily hold within them the exact qualities that make afternoons so mellow for me, in any city, any place. What are these qualities.

Firstly, there is something extremely modest about them. Afternoons don’t have the exalted devotion, spiritual promise and work-is-worshipness of mornings and morning raags. Nor do they have the strut, stature, yearning or exotic unease of evening and night and their associated raags. Afternoons are the here and now; earthy, kind, undemanding. Like a friend who sits in silence with you, with the occasional smile, maybe a titter over an uncomplicated joke, or a full-blown belly-laugh at the memory of some long-ago absurdity.

Afternoons mean important or knotty deadlines have been attended to; and anything else has been firmly told to go fly a kite for a while. Like a student deciding to take an ATKT on some subject, or leaving some chapters ‘for option’, in the afternoon, I am freed from being everything that is expected of me, achieving my full potential, and all that jazz. Afternoons bring with them the ability for me to say: bass, itney paise mey itna hi kaam hota hai. And thereby help me to stonewall unrealistic demands and save me from making reckless promises that I tend to make in the too-efficient mornings.

It feels like nothing can take away the afternoon. Not anything that happened before and anything that is to still reveal itself. This moment remains unassaulted; no jagged edges, no need to be nimble-footed. At least not while the afternoon raag plays and the breeze dances.

Perhaps it is because I am in the dopahar of my life, that I love dopahar so much? The doubt-filled, struggling mornings are gone; the unknown evening hasn’t come. Only an assured here-and-nowness informs most of my being and my work. But I have always loved afternoons.

The only off note in my afternoon raag is that I had an afternoon-dog, but now he’s gone. His night arrived, well before mine. There is a Snoopy-shaped hole in my afternoon, but it doesn’t gape anymore; its outlines have softened from acceptance and reconciliation, and my memory of the magic morning of our early life together.

gouri