Headstart

I belong to that secret fraternity of early risers. Those that are up and about and whizzing around like apes on amphetamines, much, much before the heavy blanket of sleep is peeled away from the eyes and forms of those who’ve been blessed with the luxury of long lie-ins.

I think we’re secret not because we have illusions that we’re on par with the Free Masons in a closed-door-society kind of a way;  not even because we’ve not filed our tax returns. What we do while the shadows are still lingering stubbornly is not as exciting as a long, luxuriating lie-in, a tousled bed-head or the sleep-drenched voice of a late riser that makes your hair stand on end with a sexy frisson. It’s because it’s unexcitingly routine.

We’re the preppers, the backroom boys, the drum rollers who are on stand-by for the headline makers, who when they do wake up, will be fronting the show that we prepped. And we’d be lucky if we even got a quick rolling credit.

And so when you see your freshly showered colleague walk into the office with a cloud of soap aromas mixed with the still-diffusing middle notes of Acqua di Gio Armani or your stick-thin cubicle partner who proudly places her skyscraper lunch box with separate storeys of alfalfa sprouts for elevenses, the perfect mix of carbs-protein-dairy-salad-fruit-and-dandelion-tea for lunch, (all adding up to less than 500 calories), and a multi-grain sandwich for the witching hour of 5.00 pm, know this. He/she has a prepper, someone who primes the day while he/she is oblivious to that shadowy band of daybreak between 5.00 a.m and 6.30 a.m. as much as most people are unaware of what 3.00 a.m.looks like.

We’re the ones that make sure no sugar bowls are empty, that spoons are found when spoons are required, not forks, not knives, not skewers, screwdrivers, pens, crochet needles or a million other things that hide in jars marked `spoons’. Did someone switch on the geyser? Did someone pump the water into the overhead tank? Who raced to the door like a comet whooshing across the sky to catch the newspaper tossed by the newspaper boy before it landed on the porch, left wet from the rains last night? Who turned off the water sump tank tap, but sadly not before it overflowed, clogged the garden and left one foot of standing water? Who squelched into the muddy waters, fished out the long wiry stick from that corner in the garden, behind the tulsi plant which no one else knows about and unclogged the drainage spout? Who discovered at 4.30 in the morning that the cooking gas cylinder was empty and no one had mentioned it last night?  Who waylaid the milkman to remind him about the extra packet of milk he has to deliver every Wednesday, before he cycled off into the morning mists…

I’m not quite sure when and how and who inducted us into this society of early risers. This much I can tell you: it must have been under coercion or when I was under the influence of sleep; and sleep is the only anesthetizing process I’ve been under, since my tonsillectomy. And now, even sleep is a privilege, handed out like candy to a diabetic, extremely rarely.

Us early birds could be shrouded in mystery, but sadly none of us talk about it that way, or at all.  I think the last person who gushed about early mornings was John Donne and I think there was a mistress involved. I can’t go into raptures about that time of day, because, really who has the time. Meanwhile our secret society has saved the world, even before it knew it was in danger, and much before the sun had swiped in his card.