WORK | LIFE | BALANCE

When Sleep Was A Luxury

A peaceful retired life

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Then

When I was teaching, morning lectures began at 7 am. I had four consecutive lectures, on different floors. I made it a point to reach the College by 6.30 am. Which meant that I needed to wake up at 4.30 am. I refuse to step out of the house without a shower, breakfast, and my favourite saree.

The saree had accessories that paired with it. The slender necklaces in different colours and materials that would match my saree. The brocade, cotton, silk or jute-fibre blouse that went with it. The earrings: long ones for an open hairstyle, shorter ones, for a plait, and plain diamond or gold studs for a chignon at the nape of my neck.

All these were always laid out the previous night so that I didn’t have to rush over my toilette. Wherever I go, I like arriving there looking composed, rather than as if I had just woken up.

I needed to catch the 6.10 bus in order to reach the college by 6.25 or 6.30. In the morning when there’s almost no traffic on the roads, the bus fairly flies along, hardly stopping anywhere. After I read Harry Potter, I often compared it to the Knight Bus, the way it went barrelling down the empty roads, stopping suddenly, and starting just as suddenly.