What's Dew To You Will Always Find You

(Published in Zeitgeist, The New Indian Express, on 28th November, 2009)

This is a universal axiom, almost as sacred as Homer Simpson’s “Always make fun of those different from you” – there is nothing more depressing than waking up before the sun. Throughout my life, it has been a policy to wake up ten minutes before I’m required to be at work. I have mastered the technique of multi-tasking well enough to look perfectly presentable in that much time.

But a series of indescribable events led to my having to wake up at four in the morning on a regular basis for nearly a year. And there is nothing singularly more annoying at these times than that despicable category of homosapien known as ‘The Early Riser’.

My first encounter with this category was a former friend from college. The one time she stayed over at my place, she flung open the windows of my heavily-curtained room at seven in the morning, to let in the natural smoke-filled air and the early morning sounds of the mechanics at the shed next door banging away at components of cars.

“What…,” I said groggily, vaguely aware of a beam of hellish light penetrating my subconscious. That was the last word I was to ever utter to her.

The second specimen I met lived in my dorm at university. Another roommate and I made a habit of sitting in the heated kitchen with cups of tea until four in the morning to get through the cold London winters. Just as we were sinking into the conviction that Robert Browning was right when he said “God's in His Heaven, All's Right With the World”, and getting ready for bed, a scourge would seep into the kitchen.

It was the aura of another roommate, who found it prudent to wake up in the middle of the night and cycle about twenty miles to the Thames to go rowing every other day. He would whistle his way to the kitchen, beam at us and say, “good morning, everybody!” I would shudder, and my soul roommate would grunt. Wordlessly, we would direct an ugly look at the Scourge and stagger to our rooms, as he opened the windows to breathe in the smoggy mist and revel in the acidic dew.

And then there’s my landlady. On the few days I don’t have to wake up at four in the morning, she does. Just as I put away my book, pat my pillow, fluff up my duvet and switch on the heater, she waddles to the bathroom and starts filling up water. As the sound of running water hitting plastic assaults my ears, the idea of a cold water bath in winter sends a convulsive shiver up my spine. And then she begins to call out to her husband that their daughter-in-law must be the laziest creature God ever took the pains to create – she wakes up at the Devil’s Hour of 6:00 a.m.

I spend hours in bed thinking up suitable punishments for these people. I have stopped praying for a reprieve – I believe, and I’m sure every sane human being would agree with me, that God has done His best to make mornings cruel. I sometimes wish one of those cars populated by whoo-girls and whoo-boys that blast past playing hip-hop music would stop near the Early Riser, spill out their occupants and have them spill out the contents of their night’s gastronomic excesses over the Early Riser. I wish the birds whose chirps the Early Riser wakes up so eagerly to hear would be so moved as to bless the latter.

But for my part, I’ve convinced my landlady that waking up before sunrise speeds up osteoporosis. My last few weeks have been water-on-plastic-bucket-free.