Saturday Shuffle

It was 7AM on a Saturday morning and I was hearing the song “Despacito.” In comes the call. My wife said, “They missed the bus.” Our kids had missed the school bus and they had to be in school that day. One had an exam and the other had an important match. Thanks to practicing AIM, I told my wife, “Let us not scream at them“. She opened the door, and both of my daughters walked into the room with their head down.

The kids don’t usually have school on Saturday. That day they did, thanks to a Bharat Bandh earlier that week.  I was internally thinking that it was all my fault. I had insisted to have a quick snack in an old Bangalore restaurant at 9pm the previous night after we had watched a dance program. Not only did they sleep late but thanks to the food, my elder daughter had a stomach upset.

We had to take the next decision. I had made my Saturday plans. I was engaged in putting out quotes on Facebook and this was my quote:

Normally I will not get up from my sacred space. Now it was my turn to show how much flexibility I possess. My wife jumped in an said, ” Vinod I will drop them and come.” That statement rocked me from the chair. I knew I had to take a fast call. It was time to “live by the quote”.  Life is choice-full and choice-less. With a blinding flash of insight, I added: ” I will also join and let us have some fun on the way in the car”. I decided to move.  I really meant it because most of our family conversations and music discussions happen in the car.

For the past few days, my younger daughter was listening to songs by “One Direction.” I had also become a fan of a few songs like “Steal my girl”, “Best song ever” and “What makes you beautiful.” I knew it was going to be a 45-minute drive. As soon as we started, my younger daughter wanted to hear all the songs. On the phone, we played all the videos and we were enjoying the drive and the songs and our mood started shifting to a picnic one. All of us were now singing along. We had a good time together and we reached just in time for them to catch up with the classes. Parked next to our car was a favorite car of mine and I decided to take a couple of pictures ( No selfie).

We started from the school and as I accelerated my wife asked me, ” where can we go now?” I said, ” Let us go to the Agara lake”. She said, ” I was also about to say the same thing”. We have been wanting to see this lake after the renovation and every time we passed by this lake we both would say, ” One day let us visit”. So that was the day and we figured out the parking and we started walking along the trails.

It was one of the best experiences with nature I had in some time. In the serenity of the lake and the trees around it, it was hard to imagine that we were in the middle of a busy city. The sight of runners, walkers, and onlookers was interesting. I had a sense that I might be knowing someone in this track as I had been to a couple of runs and lo and behold, one gentleman paused and said, ” I have seen you in a club meeting”. We couldn’t quite identify each other by name but it felt good to connect with him. We continued walking the entire stretch of around 3kms. My wife took a lot of photos and I told her that we can use them in blogs. The scenic beauty of nature is worth capturing every time as we get engulfed in the moment. My wife mentioned a specific way of taking photos with an L frame and she captured it.

After some time we felt it was time for a coffee and we decided to drop by a coffee shop. In the coffee shop, we both reflected on the day. Ideally, we would have been home if the day would have continued just like we had planned. In the coffee shop, I saw a billboard  “ fall in love with your favorites”. In our 45 mins drive, we heard “Despacito” and all our individual favorites from “Roar” to “Steal my girl” and had some fun conversations as a family.  My younger one said, “it is a different drive, both of us are in uniform and you are in your weekend casual dress.” The journey was worth remembering. In life we will face these kinds of situations, the question is “are you ready to shuffle?” In that shuffle, you will go through an unplanned journey. For us, it was the lake experience which otherwise would have got buried in our weekend madness. Now there was one more lesson for us not to scream at our kids.