Play, Learn, Earn, Adjourn

 

Arun Kumar

 

Every evening, the sun descends below the tree line behind our home and paints the blue canvas of the sky with different hues of red, orange, pink, and some other shades of color that I cannot even begin to name.

Most evenings, I hardly pay any attention to those colors. On a few occasions I would chance to look through the window and find myself saying, wow, where did those colors came from?

Some evenings, the colors in the sky are not merely different, they are exceptional.

The same happens with the steady progression of days. Most days nothing extraordinary happens. But scattered among the mundane, some days feel exceptional and their imprints in the pages of memories stand out like distant skyscrapers that dot the horizon of an approaching city.

 The story is the same for myriad of transitions in life. Viewing the landscape of life from high above, some transitions are exceptional in their character; others, just Meh. One of the transitions that is exceptional transition is retirement.

If I fly high above in the sky and look at the line below what life has been, it has been everything I could be grateful for. It has been a fortunate progression of events. There are no gaps in the line or jarring 360 degree turns. No unexpected layoffs or being told by a doctor on a routine visit that something just does not seem right.

On that road of my life, there are no tread marks of a car skidding off the road.

True to the logo on the t-shirt I sometimes wear, the line says, “I am blessed.”

The line below wiggles a little but follows a direction. The events that felt like they were going to upend the future, when seen from here and now, seem not so significant.

Along the line, the colors change gradually as I move from left to the right, from the moment of my birth to where I stand now. Distinct colors belong to phases that I have lived. In between them there are zones of transitions where colors gracefully morph from one shade into another.

In most transitions there was a comfort in knowing what to expect. The path was laid out by the norms – play, learn, earn. Those transitions were, well, just transitions.

Nothing exceptional. Nothing jarring. Nothing traumatic.

In all those transitions, the future was there. The script was already written - Chapter 1: Play. Chapter 2: Learn. Chapter 3: Earn - and I played the script out. Until now.

As I turn the page, suddenly a blank one stares back at me. There is no script to follow. No words laid out in straight lines. No instructions on what to do next. All I have in front is the chapter heading – Adjourn. And below, written in smaller letters – The Retirement.

This time, as I am getting ready to reach the start line of a transition thinking that it would be another easy lap, there is no one standing to hand me the baton. Instead, there is a jarring sense of emptiness. A feeling that the life ahead is going to be unanchored, and I will drift through the sea of continuous, but empty, progression of days.

As I turn around the corner, the usual nicely laid out track is not there. There is no red turf with graceful white lines to guide my steps. Instead, there is an unpaved road with billboards that look down at me. On them, scribbled are questions – How are you going to spend the days? What will be your meaning and purpose? What will be your identity?

This is not what I was expecting when I turned the page and reached Chapter 4.

Like the exceptional colors of some evening sky, or like some days that do become imprinted in our memories, this transition turns out to be exceptional.

Added to the mix of bafflement of needing to navigate an unscripted transition is a magnified realization of mortality. A realization that this time road does not actually go on forever.

At the start of this journey, I am leaving so much behind – identity, purpose, meaning, routine – and yet I do not have anything in my hands - no script to guide what is ahead – and for a bonus, I have an enhanced sense of mortality.

It is hard to come to grips with the fact that this time I am holding the reins. It is I who will draw on resources within to build an identity, find purpose and meaning, find reasons to get out of bed in morning.

It is time to realize, and to accept, that retirement is a transition that is vastly different from others. This time, responsibility for the future is on my shoulders.

This time, I need to write the script.

It is time to start scribbling words on the empty page. Chapter 4 – Adjourn (The Retirement).

I will let you know how the script goes.

Ciao.

Retirement is...

 

...a feeling of
being born again
and not knowing
whether to say,
hallelujah, or, oh f**k,
as your first profound
memorable words.

A Polyamourous Threesome - II

As future shortens

and the past grows,

their aggregate follows 

a law of conservation --

the constancy of sum

of what is there to come

and what is gone.

In between 

there is the present

trying to balance;

trying to smile;

trying not to fall. 

Orange Pekoe Tea

Arun Kumar

Be it winter, spring, summer, or fall, if I am home and not zooming around in some distant part of the galaxy in search of nirvana, the day begins with a cup of loose-leaf orange pekoe black tea. 

Holding a warm cup of freshly brewed tea with palms wrapped around the cup as if trying to hold a fragile baby bird that had fallen out of its nest, is such a wonderful start to a day. In the months of winter, the feeling will be even more sublime.

Making Orange Pekoe tea each morning follows the same ritual. From the dark recesses of the kitchen cabinet, pull out the jar of tea, take a spoonful and put it into the infuser. This is while every passing moment, water in the electric kettle edges towards its boiling temperature. 

Once the electric kettle lets me know that it has done its job, water gets poured in a cup in which the infuser also sits. I set the timer on the microwave for four minutes, and when the timer goes off, it is time for ...drum roll... My Very First Cup of Orange Pekoe Black Tea. 

The tea has a beautiful deep brown color, and the translucent cup in which it sits brings out its glory; a wonderful aroma wafts up with the steam that rises from the cup. The cup of tea whispers to me to slow down and take time to appreciate and enjoy its company.

The main story, however, is about the jar that holds the loose-leaf orange pekoe tea.

Once I fill up the jar with tea, taking a spoonful each day hardly registers on the amount of tea that is remaining. In the beginning the change in the amount of tea is barely discernible; the level seems to stay the same. My mind never goes to the thoughts that there might come a day when the jar would be empty. 

But sooner or later, illusions get broken and reality settles in.

Today morning after taking out the usual spoonful of tea I noticed that there is only few more spoonful worth of tea was left in the jar. With that realization came the thought that after a few more days, the jar would be empty. 

The thought also led to the epiphany about how similar the process of jar emptying one spoonful a day is what happens with our life also.

In the beginning, life starts as a full jar. All through childhood, youth, days of building a career and slowly getting too immersed in it to the extent that it becomes our definition and identity, it is hard to realize that each day a spoonful of time is being taken away. 

Initially the emptying the jar of time is so gradual that it does not seem like we are ever going to run out of days. 

But one innocuous day going over the 60th birthday or having an existential moment of reckoning while sitting at some random spot or realizing pain and aches in the knees when outside temperature drops, or the humidity rises or when the work is no longer all-consuming, comes the awareness that the jar of time is suddenly whole lot emptier. The amount of time left in the jar is suddenly close to the bottom and there are not that many more spoonfuls left to take out.

That is when we say – where did the time go?

That moment of epiphany is the moment when a whole lot around, and within us, changes. 

The transformation is like waking up one day and seeing the world around us with different colored glasses, or suddenly starting to see things that did not register on our consciousness before. 

Foremost among them being that if you drink orange pekoe tea one day at a time, the jar will eventually get empty. Or alternatively, as you live one day at a time, the jar will eventually get empty. 

And with that, different aspects of life that sat high on the totem pole of priorities start to inch downwards and lose relevance they once held.

That point in time when the awareness of the limits of our existence gels is a milestone and how we handle the awareness shapes our future journey.

Today I also broke another myth I held. It turned out that there is no orange in the orange pekoe tea. Really? 

Contrary to what I thought, the tea does not have extract from the orange peel. Here is what ChatGPT had to say: 

“The term "orange" in "orange pekoe" refers to the color of the dried tea leaves used to make the tea, rather than the fruit itself. "Pekoe" is derived from the Chinese word "baihao," which means "white hair" and refers to the young leaves and buds of the tea plant...The use of the word "orange" in "orange pekoe" can be traced back to the Dutch traders who played a significant role in the early tea trade. The Dutch term for a high-quality, whole-leaf tea was "oranjebohea," which over time, was anglicized to "orange pekoe,”” At least, that is one story behind the name.

Oh well. I also once thought that turquoise is the name of some fruit!  

Ciao.